Editing enemy level progression (tl;dr version below)

[xanieeee]

Greetings!

 

I've been lurking here for a few days now after installing and playing Warspace Extension mod on Classic Ironman.

 

Warspace Extension is wonderful. It added so much on the original game which is mostly possitive like overhauling the Interceptor-UFO mechanic(needs a bit more balance, but it's still great), fixing the balance among different armors, removing the AI cheat stats and unshackling(?) their tactical game instead. The author was right - It feels less of a dice game now and more of a tactical game.

 

There's also some things I didn't quite like. Examples would be the doubled required XP to level up your soldiers. It takes a very long time for them to rank up so when they are killed it is extremely difficult to train new soldiers to replace them. And add the 120 day sickbay recoveries and I'm almost always stuck with a bunch of new recruits fighting Mutons and Heavy Floaters at some point.

 

My biggest gripe, however, is about the enemy progression. My main, low level, squad is getting crushed by a hoards of Mutons, Floaters, and sometimes Discs on month 2 where I'm still trying to get some kills on my support so he can bring 3 medkits in the field. On a good playthrough my troops will survive and get stuck in the med bay for 30 days(instead of 120). I'll be stuck with new soldiers with a single skill each desperately trying to defend themselves against 2 sets of Mutons/Zerks. Without the right skills and raw aim chances they will always get screwed. By the time my main squad gets to a sickbay it's basically game over for me.

 

On vanilla I would always rotate my soldiers every couple of missions to get at least 10 of them to a decent rank. I find it impossible to do that with this mod due to its higher needed XP/kills to rank up and unbelievably long sickbay rests.

 

I almost uninstalled this mod after a dozen attempt at Normal mod/Classic/Ironman. I just couldn't, though. The tweaks, fixes, and other things made this mod wrothwhile. So I decided to edit the mod to fit my liking instead. I have almost zero experience and knowledge on modding but I'm learning just so I can play a good run of Xcom.

 

So far I've learned how to edit the source's ini's numbers. I tweaked the sickbay. I made it about double its original number- a lot less than the original Warspace. Now I'm looking for a way to edit the enemy's progression. Basically I want the higher tier aliens to appear much later to the game. Maybe introduce two new species every month? Sectoids and Thin Men on the first month, Floaters and Chryssalid on the second, Discs and Drones on the third and so forth.

 

Any help would be apprecaited. Any tips on how to do better on Warspace-normal/Classic/Ironman would also be appreciated.

 

 

tl;dr How do I edit enemy tier/level progression? I want to slow it down so I don't get owned by Mutons with Plasma Rifles on the second month. Thanks in advance!

Edited April 24, 2013 by xanieeee

[johnnylump]

It takes hex editing, which is a jump up in complexity from .ini editing. Specifically, you want to make changes to the file xcomstrategygame.upk. This involves decompressing the file, opening it UExplorer to see the code, and opening it in a hex editor to make changes to the bytecode to get the desired effect. To affect alien progression, you'll want to edit class XGStrategyAI, function GetPossibleAliens(). Then you'll need to patch in the changes to the exe file with XShape.

 

I realize that's may not be clear at all; it takes some learnin', but it can be done. Read the wiki (a work in progress) http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Hex_editing_UPK_files and perhaps the other tutorials on this forum. Good luck.

[xanieeee]

Hi Johnny.

 

Thanks for replying and directing me to that awesome tutorial. Editing this stuff is much more complicated than I thought. After reading the tutorial you posted I kinda got overwhelmed and just decided to start another game with just my tweaked ini for now. I returned the XP needed for ranking up to vanilla and tweaked the sickbay duration like what I stated earlier. I also buffed the rookie's accuracy by 1% just to see if the changes I made were working fine.

 

Anyway I'm on my second month on my current classic/ironman playthrough and I noticed that I'm still fighting Thin Men and regular Floaters instead of the usual Discs and Mutons. From what I gather I thought that enemy progression was strictly time-based. I'm not so sure right now.

 

There's only TWO different things I did with my current playthrough and the past dozen failed ones - Usually UFO scouts would escape from my Interceptors because of bad luck AND usually I'd put a bunch of satellites over continents other than my starting one.

 

Now I'm focusing my satellites on Asia only and for some reason I'm really lucky at shooting down those small scouts.

 

 

So what's the real trigger here? What's causing all those higher tier enemies to come at me at a very early stage?

[Amineri]

The aliens present on a mission are selected at random for each mission.

 

However, the possible alien types (and the relative chance of each appearing) depend on the month.

 

The default hex code divides it up over the first 8 months.

 

Month 0 is sectoids only

Month 1 is 40% sectoids, 40% floaters, 20% thin men

Month 2 is 11% sectoids, 22% floaters, 22% thin men, 44% mutons

and so on

By month 7 all alien types are possible. Month 7 and beyond nothing changes in the alien squads.

 

Even in month 7 and beyond it is still possible to get a sectoid pod -- but the odds are only 1/28 per pod that it will be sectoids.

 

Each "pod" that is generated gets its own roll on the table, so it's possible to get a mission in month 1 with all thin men -- it's just unlucky. It's also possible to get a month 2 mission with no mutons, if that's the way that the dice roll.

 

----------------------------------------------------

 

JL and I have been working on incorporating into Long War a mod that upgrades the alien stats over time, so that the "early" aliens remain relevant later in the game. This of course means rebalancing the alien squad percentages a bit.

Edited April 24, 2013 by Amineri

[xanieeee]

Thank you for the detailed explanation, Amineri.

 

I'm about to finish my game in a day or two. I guess after a dozen failed games I got lucky this time.

 

Also that Long War mod seems very interesting. I found that the game's difficulty scaling is kinda off. Instead of going up the longer you play, it has like a spike on the middle. Like:

 

Month 1 = Easy

Month 2 = Not so easy

Month 3 = HARD

Month 4 = HARD

Month 5 = Not to easy

Month 6 = Easy

[Amineri]

The vanilla game definitely has an inverted difficulty curve (hardest at the beginning, and gets easier as you progress).

 

A lot of the modlets that I work on try to remedy that, either by making the earlier game a bit easier (allowing battlescanners, smoke grenades and medikits to be free equippable items early on, or allowing SHIVs to be built from the beginning, w/o Foundry), or by making the late game harder (toning down squadsight, adding to alien stats, giving aliens regeneration and damage reduction).

 

JL has also incorporated improving the alien ships over time (scouts get upgraded to twin UFO plasma cannons at a certain point) into the Long War mod. The 1.08 version will have a lot of these features -- it's been in the "balancing stage" for a bit now, but should hopefully have an official release soon ^_^. If you are interested in providing feedback, there is a 1.08 beta version up on the Long War page.

 

(( You can blame me for the much larger file size, as one of my modlets modifies the Situation Room UI, which is responsible for the drastic file size increase ))

[johnnylump]

@ Xanieeee -- Thanks for giving Long War a try. Please keep the feedback coming -- there's a Long War thread on this forum, as well as connected to the mod itself. Obviously information like the mod version, difficulty setting, and your tech path would be particularly helpful. All the modding has added a lot of things to balance, and I can only discover so much in my own playthroughs, so any information and thoughts you can throw at me would be very helpful.