davidlallen

There are hundreds of mods that change all sorts of values. Or you can change them yourself by editing text files on your own machine. Take a look at the nexus download site or steam workshop. To make your own changes, start with the resources here: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3801885-proposed-sticky-thread-modding-resources/

Let me make sure I understand where you see these extra aliens appearing. 1. In the character pool? 2. In the barracks (under the armory menu)? 3. The project, rather than the alien itself, in the proving ground menu? For #1, I don't even know how aliens could get there. I have never seen any aliens there let alone any extra ones. For #2, the only time aliens appear directly in the barracks is in the very first version of the mod by sgtcal. All the versions since March have aliens appear only when you complete the project. I suppose it is possible you have a save game which includes that old version of the mod, and perhaps that is acting as some kind of infinite loop generator. I don't know how to get rid of that. For #3, this is reported commonly, and may have to do with a relatively recent mod version overlapping with the latest mod version, when you have a save game with one of them and you load it with the other one. Sometime in March it was reported that the way the game tells mods about whether the mod is already loaded, does not in fact work. So the mod may not realize the mod is already in a save game, and may add the projects over again.

@ ionutro, that is very odd. Can you confirm which version of the mod you are using? That is, the most recent one is here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=644076161 If you are using a different one, please give the details. It seems that you may be using the very oldest version of the mod from February. That is the only way to get aliens in the character pool without having built them in the armory. If you change versions of the mod, please delete all the local ini files from My Documents/My Games/XCOM2/XComGame/Config. Note that changing mod versions will not get rid of the existing aliens.

@ zyxpsilon, sorry for the omission. I will add the credit the next time I am able to update the description. (sadly I do not have edit permission)

How many mods are you using? In the May 12 patch, the game added a feature for class-specific armor. This feature broke every class mod. If you have class mods, please make sure you have the fixed version. If the mod provider did not make a fixed version, you cannot use that mod anymore. For some mods, you may be able to make the change yourself; see the first post of this thread: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4112090-2016-05-12-patch-sdk-changes/

There is a console command levelupbarracks <n> which levels up all your soldiers by N levels (default 1).

The mod "playable advent" (steam/nexus) adds advent mecs as playable soldiers. This is similar, but not exactly the same.

Thanks, "viper spit not working" has been reported on the steam comments thread also. Although oddly, several people said spit is currently working for them. That is fourth on my list, after extra heads, disallowing change of gender, and cloning the viper rifle to three different strengths.

I don't think any changes I will make soon, will cause incompatibility. It is possible that your existing aliens with two heads will still have two heads. But, I will implement a console command which should fix them, similar to givealienarmor.

People usually search for answers by looking at thread titles. This thread has so much stuff mixed up in it that nobody will ever find any of it. Please post a new question on a new thread, so that others will be able to find it. BTW, I have not had much luck with PM'ing moderators. I doubt they would lock a thread unless there is some reason stronger than this one, but still, please consider this thread dead.

It is certainly safe. The extra heads are a graphical only glitch.

When I am able to do a release I will update the description to document this more clearly. There are three "first class" aliens (viper, mec, chryssalid) and N number of "second class" aliens (muton, berserker, andromedon, and any others which may be added in the future). For "first class" aliens, maclimes created custom armors and a special setup. These aliens have customizable armor colors and voice pack support. Also after the patch, these aliens have an extra head. The second class aliens do not have any of these features or problems. Since maclimes is not around and nobody else knows exactly what he did, it is unlikely that any aliens will be promoted to first class. Of course, if any other person who is interested in animation comes along and wants to help, that will be great.

They are normal in the armory screen. The extra head only appears in tactical.

Sigh. This thread was dead for two months, till yesterday. Please start new threads for this stuff, it is a whole forum about modding.

Thanks for the info about the incompatible change to missions.ini. For Hostile Territory (the one with the human enemies), there was only a small part of the mod I could accomplish with -/+ in the ini file. We have discussed in a few other threads about the limitations of that (mixing leaders from mod A with followers from mod B). I wonder what problem they were solving with buckets, it doesn't sound like it solves that problem. Once two mods (or one mod and one dlc) start editing the same section of the ini with -/+, the results will rarely be correct. I wound up doing a lot of my key changes to the mission.ini data structures using uc in a screenlistener. Although ini file editing is nice, I feel it runs out of steam fairly quickly. I recommend thinking about editing the mission data using uc instead.

When Firaxis updates the sdk they should really update the zip files. It would be better to have only one copy of the files instead of two, but leaving the outdated source around seems dangerous.

There are two major compatibility problems with the patch, summarized in the first post of this thread: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4112090-2016-05-12-patch-sdk-changes/ To fix the armor problem, an individual player can change the ini file as described there. Unfortunately there is no way an individual player can fix the infinite item problem; this requires a simple change in the unrealscript files, but then you have to recompile the mod using the sdk. If you use several weapon mods which have this problem, and you know which ones, you may wish to check their comment thread at steam. Possibly the problems are already reported, or fixed in a new version on steam. If not, perhaps the author will look at either their steam comment thread or their nexus download thread; you should post something to make sure they know about the problem. Unfortunately when this type of incompatibility comes from a patch, we discover many mods are "dead" and the author is no longer supporting them.

Thanks for all your cards and letters. I have tried several things, and I am still not able to fix the extra head. I had one solution, but it creates hundreds of "redscreen" debug messages. I will keep looking. On the plus side, when I do make the new release, the class-specific armor capability they added should fix all the comments about alien armor disappearing, even when the gender is changed.

You make it sound so simple. Right now I am a little paralyzed by the extra heads.

I recommend finding one of the smaller mods that add aliens, maybe advent sniper. Pick apart each file in the mod to see why it is there. Then, assuming you have an idea for a unique new enemy, try implementing it. Start small and build up.

Reusing the custom viper weapon would work. But we need to define three tiers for it so it will work well as you go through the entire game, which means two upgrade research projects, and a bunch of other stuff. So it is not a "quick" fix unfortunately.

Those are some very disturbing screenshots. Thanks for the info, but as with your other description of five steps of importing and exporting out of the character pool, I am not sure how that relates to things modders can actually do in the source code. I am a little bit stuck on this since the animator who created the armors isn't around anymore. Still, I am discussing with a Firaxis dev on reddit and perhaps I will be able to get some solution.

Updated after PM discussion. The AH DLC armors contain custom animations. If you equip the armor, and then use the Armor Variety mod to replace with the visual of another armor, then the animations can't play. I added a comment to this effect into the mod description at steam.

Having a long mod list is always a problem right after a patch. First, try deleting all the ini files in My Documents/My Games/XCOM 2/XComGame/Config. Second, do you get your mods through steam or through nexus? If through nexus, you may need to manually ensure that you have any post-patch version update for every mod. Through steam, auto-update ensures you have this. If you wind up updating any mods, delete the ini files again. Third, try a "binary search". Disable half your mods; does the problem still appear? Disable another half. If the problem goes away, re-enable half of what you just disabled. Once you get down to a few mods, check the steam or nexus comment threads to see if there is any update, workaround or known problem. If not, inform the author. After a big patch which breaks many mods, we usually discover a bunch of mod authors have moved on and do not respond to bug reports, so you may wind up dropping some of these "dead" mods.

Please give us a little time to research the problem and fix it properly.