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Also have the same issue. I think it is related to starting First Lessons at CoW. If I load up a previous save and go straight to the Jarl he offers it. *EDIT* Did some digging in CK and there doesn't appear to be any conditions or checks that should prevent the dialogue from happening after doing any of the CoW activities. *EDIT2* Did some more testing and it has something to do with fast traveling or leaving Winterhold without asking todo the quest. My test: Carriage ride to Winterhold, go in and talk to the Jarl (quest topic exists), exit and start first lessons (no tour just access), go back to the Jarl (quest topic still there), fast travel to Whiterun and back and no more quest topic.

I might be wrong in this but reloading after a missed shot and having another soldier fire does not guarantee a miss. It simply transfers that roll to him. I think the best analogy would be D&D in that one character may need a 16 to hit while another needs only a 12. So if all your guys miss reloading and hunkering them doesnt guarantee the aliens will miss as well. From experience I've been able to save scum my way out of some bad situations simply by reloading and trying different combos of moves and shots/etc untill I got the perfect result. So I think its misleading to tell ppl to hunker and pass the missed rolls to the aliens.

Some folks feel that if a soldier is in full cover and hunkered he should be 100% (or close to) safe unless he is flanked and vice versa for the aliens. Right now thats not the case. I play my games moving my soldiers exclusivly to high cover so that I avoid taking damage but I still get hit from offscreen or across insane distances. My only option is basically to savescum. The other is to use one soldier to pull aliens into killing zones which becomes really effective once you get high end snipers but still feels like cheating and is completly counter to the supposed tactical game where we are supposed to flank and overwatch. The ideal game was Full Spectrum Warrior. If you were in cover and your enemy was in cover no matter how much lead was put down range neither side took damage (unless the cover was destroyable) and you had to flank or use special abilities to take out your target. This should be the case with xcom. If you are out in the open one hit=one kill (with exceptions for high end armour and aliens like mutons) half cover no hunker= small chance of being killed or damaged (you expose yourself when firing but its so short that it would have to be a perfect shot) half cover and hunker/full cover no hunker= small chance of taking minor damage (the cover hides your head/torso but your limbs can still be hit/ your arms/legs are exposed as you are firing but again require a perfect shot) full cover hunker (you are completly hidden from the enemy and short of taking out the cover you cant be hit by anything) That was at least my initial interest in modding cover but i have no really knowledge in this area and was simply bringing the idea up so people who could take a look might. Not sure if others who are interested feel the same way so hopefully if they disagree with me they'll post an answer for you.

i can find a few references to the cover bonus (i.e. COVER_BONUS_LOW 20) but it doesn't appear to do anything when i try to change it. It was brough up in another thread but its possible the changes are working but just not being displayed on the UI. Not sure if this test would work but try and set up a shot that hits with the regular cover, edit the cover up to something like 99% (ie would make the shot chance zero) and see if it still hits. Unless you've already tried this...

The issue I have with the RNG (as you might have gathered from my prev post) isnt with the randomness but more the impact it has on your decisions. I stopped playing for a bit but when I get back to it ill be 90% of the time hunkering my guys in full cover and ignoring half cover and just waiting for the aliens to come to me basically. This is the suggested method on a lot of boards- using one guy to lure the aliens to you by moving back out of their sight- although I have seen it fail as I've been killed by aliens shooting at me from the fog of war (my guys werent hunkered, they were on overwatch). Forget flanking or anything of the like. I wouldnt feel so upset over missing an 80%+ shot while flanking if it didnt mean my guy gets killed even though he is in full cover. This is why I'm much more interested (and believe it would be simpler) to mod the cover bonuses rather than mess around with the RNG.

@Daemonjax So is the only reason to unpack the upk is to be able to open the files within to find the "references" to w/e we are changing? Once we find the references they are the same within the packed upk? I though I read something like that in another thread.

If Labs are modded to be useful than yes optimal layouts will be key. The other issue and why 2x2 square of uplinks and 1 nexus might make more sense is it might be easier to build. You needs sats and uplinks asap so by the time nexus' are available and buildable you might already need to have 3 or 4 uplinks

@Crashdown1 I think you're confusing my idea with someone elses. I'm talking about the low/high cover defense bonuses that affects aim. In my mind high cover should make you essentially unhittable(especially if you are hunkering down). So if you and the enemy are both in high cover you can either exchange low % shots turn after turn hoping you connect on a 10-15% shot or you flank. I just double checked and the cover defense bonus does not apply to flanked units (I had one soldier flanking and his aim did not have a minus penalty to aim from cover, and another soldier aiming through the cover and he had the -20 for low cover). My question is is 80% aim penalty for high cover too high? This will nerf snipers but they are way too powerful and make assault abilites like flush useless since they can hit just about anything regardless of cover. To compensate the bonus for higher ground might need to be upped. I'm putting this out there to other folks who are bothered by the cover system for input? Ideally the tools being worked on can be made and folks can mod whatever they want for cover bonuses and test out different values untill you get something more reasonable.

Thanks Daemonjax! You, dreadylein and the rest are awesome. Its a shame Firaxis hasnt provided any tools or made the game engine/etc less convaluted. Any thoughts on if my idea would screw up the balance of the game?

Rarther than fooling around with the RNG, I suggested a mod that changes the cover bonus. I'm a believer that if you are in full cover you should be nearly impossible to hit. I understand the game tries to simulate simultaneous action (when you take a shot your enemy is taking a shot back at you) but because its still turn based its a race to who shoots first and can connect on the shot. This was advertised as a turn based tactical game and thats what i want damn it. The game preaches that you need to flank but once you get a sniper anywhere near captain cover becomes pretty useless (for the aliens). I was suggesting going as high as 40 for half and 80 for full. I think this might address what the OP was attempting to create in fiddling with the RNG. This will create more low % shots and rather than waste ammo you will have to methodically move your troops into flanking positions. And if you used high cover your guys are unlikely to get nuked by a fluke shot from an alien on the other side of the map. 40/80 might be on the high side but I think if you are hunkering down in high cover you should be invicible (you are no longer taking a shot while being shot at).

@Daemonjax I've read the other thread regarding scripts and its a bit over my head. I was wondering if you would be able to make a mod that changes the cover bonuses to 40 for half and 80 for full. This might seem crazy but it drives me up the wall when I spend 15mins slowly creeping my guys from high cover to high cover into a flanking position and at the last second the aliens get off a shot from their half cover and nuke them. Furthermore once you get to the end game cover almost becomes useless as my snipers are able to pick off anything visible. As far as I can tell if a target is flanked it gets no defense bonus correct? Otherwise that might need to be added as an additional flanking bonus (ie plus 80 to aim or something). This would also make some abilites such as flush more useful. Do you think that would screw up the balance too much? perhaps 30/60 would be a better number? Also would it be possible to make suppression you know actually supress the target. I dont know how many times I've had a heavy suppress an alien so my assault could close only for that alien to pop its ugly head out and kill my assault on the aliens turn.

I've noticed sometimes that the game will get "stuck" if you try to move to quickly especially in post mission "reports". After a terror attack that i aborted to test something i hit escape to fast and the game got stuck on the world view rather than showing me verious countries going into panic so i just had to reload.

the base layout for me is going with squares for everything so ill be able to confirm this in the next few days. So far I have two sat uplinks horizontially and two power facilities vertically and ive got a bonus for each

For Satellite Uplinks the bonus is for every 2 uplinks you get an extra sat. So a square 2x2 gets you 12 sats (attach a Nexus and you get your 16 sats). A line of 4 only gets you 11 so square is an ideal shape. For labs/workshops/power will the square shape give you the bonus 4 times or just 3 times? The wording is "for every adjecent lab" which seems to imply that it doesnt matter if it is adjecent to more than one just that it is adjecent?

Outside of the DefaultNameList has anyone seen anything related to this reference: [XComGame.XGCharacterGenerator]

I can confirm that creating a copy of files in my documents doesnt work (at least not for what I was trying todo, reduce cost of soldier recruitment and starting soldier quantity)

Thats weird. I'm using Steam and didnt need todo anything to get it to acknowledge that change. However other things I've tried (like changing starting soldiers amount (from 12-99) and cost of Soldier Recruitment it hasnt accepted. There is a refernce to [XComGame.XGCharacterGenerator] Documents/My Games/XCOM-Enemy Unknown/XComGame/Config/XComNameList that I believe might be key to opening up soldier customization. In that same folder you can find XComContent and it will have the same list (Flags=...) and you can make the changes in there as mine are changed.

Main Game

XComGame/Config/DefaultContent About half way down: Flags=(Country=eCountry_USA, U=0.0, V=0.0) etc If you want soldiers only from one country find its U/V values and change the U/V for the rest of the countries to the one you want. You can also obviously have two or three countries by applying the changes to half/third etc. Example: Canada, U=0.75, V=0.375 so if I change USA to USA, U=0.75, V=0.375 than all spawned American Soldiers will have Canadian Flags on their backs. This only works on New Starts and I havent seen if it changes the flags in the Situation Room yet. I also didnt edit the names cause I imagine the game references those so if it looks for eCountry_USA and its missing it might crash If it can be found out where U/V values are stored and if we can add to them, it could be possible to add in new countries for soldiers. Update: Works on saves but unless your save is in combat you wont be able to see because it only changes the flags on their backs. In the Barracks it still shows their originals...back to the drawing board for a bit. I also tried to delete all other entries and regardless of which entries you keep it defaults to USA flags.

So whenever I have anything associated with Point Lookout enabled My Markers get shifted to the south of where I actually put them. They appear correctly on the World Map but on the Local Map they are in the wrong spot and as a result the compass directs me in the wrong direction. This wasnt an issue previously for me but I recently did a fresh re-install of the whole game and its come up. Im running Windows 7 64-bit and I've contacted Bethesda and they only gave me a boilerplate response in regards to Windows 7 and 64-bit systems. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions it would be much appreciated. **Update** So I've tried to uninstall and reinstall and patching and not patching and it almost seems like having the DLC enabled moves the Wasteland north in the gamespace while your player position does not change in the gamespace. Also its only shifted when I place them in the World Map..if I place it in the Local Map it is where it is supposed to be. **Update 2** So the issue appears to only be a problem around the Megaton area. Ive read how there were issues with NPC disappearing around this area or quest for PL directing you (incorrectly) to this area.

So are there any tools for using the GECK with a save file? Or for reading your save file to determine what books have been read? I know the game keeps track of the total number of books read but how about a specific breakdown by type?

Thanks for the help but I ended up figuring out which one I missed. I have a checklist but I accidentaly checked off a book that I hadent actually picked up (forgot to pick up after I had loaded a previous save) so letting you know which type of book it was wasnt going to help as I had no clue. The solution I was searching for would have been some sort of app that looks at your save file and tells you which books have been picked up/read. I dont know if this is doable but I imagine for other completionists like myself it could be useful to figure out which items have or havent been found (ie pre-war books, schematics, nuka cola quantums).

I've been trying to collect all the skill books in the game but I seem to have missed one. I know there are a couple that you can't get (ie megaton/tenpenny house) and I've accounted for that. I'm wondering if there is any way to find out which one I missed without having to go back and search each place again. Is there a way to list all the books locations and then just use the console to move to them? Its not that I need the skill points, I just want to collect them all. I do have the Prima Guide and am aware there are some errors in it.