Zybertryx

I just put this in (The Rocket Scatter Overhaul) and it's truly excellent! Well done. I think I'll skip the plague change though as that clipping bug on even Battlescanners really really annoys me. Your Rocket Overhaul allowed the range of Rockets to be set via the DGC weapon attribute "irange=##", can something similar be done for Plague so that we can reduce it from sight range to something a little more tolerable? That'd be the best fix for the problem of Thinmen imo.

An update for those interested. The modlet is live and operational but, as it firstly requires a particular implementation of the SquadSight Aim Penalty modlet to be spliced in, I'm not yet going to cough up the Hex in a find/replace manner (it's too my.upk specific atm). I'll try to get a more generic version happening (I guess I could zero the Squadsight Penalty and give a complete replace of the entire function for those who want a Squadsight Penalty free variant) and maybe even a Long War 1.9 or latest Merciless compatible offering. Alien Head Icon and Small Window Aim indicator are updating, no "F1" Menu entry yet. Looks to be problematic. DGC Aim values rebalanced accordingly. Already feels intuitively satisfying. The very worst XCOM soldiers (as well as day one Sectoids) are now very dangerous things when the conditions are favorable (when flanking or shooting at exposed targets). Base Aim nerfed to both improve the significance of cover long term and to moderate the flanking/exposed buff (to avoid 100+% shots when unaided by extreme proximity, painters, scopes and/or Colonel level Aim values), end-game stat trends nerfed in kind. It's much more the perks and equipment that separate the men from the boys now. Bertilsson correctly anticipated reaction fire shots becoming a little severe with these changes (and I worried that Oppourtunist would become ridiculously murderous). I'm happy to announce that the Aim buff is firstly easily alterable (2C ## style) and secondly that it now only applies to flanking shots and shots at exposed standing targets. If it's not a reaction shot and it is a flanking shot or an attack against an exposed target then the attacker receives the bonus Aim to that shot. Under all other conditions it will play as normal. Musing AI priority tweaks (for flanking) but still seeing how it plays out in isolation for now. Closed beta. I can say with conviction that there's no going back from this for me now, this is the definitive XCOM! This is the latest addition to a thorough overhaul I've been working on for a while (and my first working attempt at proper rescripting rather than mere integer replacement or swapping entire functions for functions ripped shamelessly from your own mod packages). I used to be a tabletop wargamer. . . my credentials. Necromunda ftw. :ermm: :geek: :biggrin: :devil: The logic: I'm settled so far on a stronger global aim nerf with a Flanking/Exposed bonus of 15%, seems to look better when considering the timescale and aim trends of the game long term. See for yourself: Special thanks to johnnylump for being so approachable, for advice, good cheer and the inspiration to get into this in earnest (Long War), and especially to Amineri for her extreme patience, tolerance of my eclectic and nooblish queries, and for what has turned out to be a dizzying crash course in HEX subtleties, technics and basic scripting (ongoing I hope). Kudos to Eliot (!), Bertilsson and Bokauk for the essential tools. Should give a shout out to Yzax as well, my first encounter with Merciless blew me away. From reading your various queries and wishes on the boards it seems you and I are of like mind on a great many things. This whole cover mechanic thing being foremost among them (and Ballistics with built-in suppression fire!) Oh, and thank you Firaxis for no map editor and no multiplayer mod support and only 5 multiplayer maps (and the crappy ones at that) and for no single player mod support and for working on an XCOM FPS instead of releasing a damn map editor (even as a $$ DLC offer) but most especially [/bittervet] for this absolute gem of a game! Z

Hmm, I've had "Suppression Bug #2" happen once now I read about it here. Well, the same symptom, the solider was unable to take cover for the rest of the map. Even next to cover he would stand animated as though he were out in the open. He also couldn't Hunker Down. But I use suppression extensively and it's definately not my experience that if Trooper A suppresses Alien Z and Trooper B kills Z while Z remains under suppression fire from A that Trooper A becomes in anyway bugged or glitchy. I do have a very irritating UI bug where the camera sort of freezes and most of the UI becomes unresponsive (though I can sort of scroll around - it's like fighting gravity). The only way I can fix is is to have the solider switch to his secondary weapon and then back to his primary. This has become increasingly common. If I give a command to a solider and it ends his turn then, as the camera moves to the next solider and I click say the Alien Head Icon to issue an attack before the camera has centered on the newly active solider, this will often cause it to happen for the next solider. I have to be patient and wait for the camera to centre before issuing commands.

Very cool. Really tempted by the new items modlet now and to throw Battlescanners, Smoke Grenades and Medipaks into the items pool. (Could remove the "only 1 item per player" restriction from Medipaks). The problem would be keeping the different classes distinct with some of their flavour perks removed. . . anyway, lots of options with that and this. If anyone can work out how to give an item (and by that I really mean a weapon) a mobility hit when equipped I'd love to know. Pet peeve of mine is that equipping an LMG type weapon doesn't impede mobility (or carrying capacity!) at all. Could be really nicely implemented with both new items and a change to the small item slots like this.

Yeah, it's odd. I always set my DGC around it, I wanted 60 - 70 but to achieve that formerly I needed a setting of LOW=60 and HIGH=65. You nailed it right here. I guess it's kinda cool to be honest, the high end base Aim guys should feel rare, and thus special. Btw, Increments of 1 is awesome. In a bizzare way they all have 'personality' now. Highly Recommended.

To get the same min/max potential I had before (60 - 70) I changed the DGC values to 60 - 69. It seems there's a little bug/feature which will always give a +5 to the max settings defined in the DGC. This is why I was seeing the rare rookie with "70" Aim even though my DGC cap was "65". After setting the increment to "1" from "5" I was seeing a maximum of "66" (my DGC max +X - X being whatever the increment is). Confirmed when I adjusted my DGC values like so, LOW_AIM=60 HIGH_AIM=69 Set like this with increments of "1", I'm now getting a range of 60 - 70 and all steps in between.

Fantastic tip on how to easily discover locations like this! And, Done and working. Rerolled new campaign, 62, 66, 63, 64. Thanks. :)

Greets, I'm using, LOW_AIM=60 HIGH_AIM=65 In the DGC to constrain the variance of starting rookie Aim values when enabling the SW option "Not Created Equal" and this results in rookies having either 60/65/70 Aim, but never 61, or 62, or 68 or 69. Only ever increments of 5. Is there a way it can be made more incremental within the boundaries set by the DGC? I don't know where it's handled (either).

Heroic response Dubious, My appologies for that somewhat somber original reply - I PM'd Kartarasha when I realised that my UE plug had nothing to do with tracing offsets in the .exe and had a kind of off putting tone too (just a symptom of my own private failure with a particular function at the moment). My analogy was pretty sound though, no?

With the use of an additional program called "UE Explorer" and its "Token View" feature. UE Explorer basically decompiles the HEX into the language-code that the developers used to write the functions so that you can view it somewhat more intelligably. Unfortunately, we can't just write in that language and have a recompiler magically hexificate it all back again for us. That's perhaps the main reason why modding XCOM is such an ordeal. We have to do it in reverse; HEX to decompiled code. :confused: It's kinda like trying to make flintstone and kindle out of a naked flame. . .

Amneri said, "There is a bit of a gap on the wiki between making simple value hex edits and more significant code changes, but I haven't figured out how to structure a tutorial. I've been working with Zybertryx to try to explain some of the fundamentals, so I'm hoping that he'll take the materials I sent him and put together a wiki tutorial while the learning process is still fresh in his mind (*hint hint* :wink: )." And I will as soon as I'm able to make new changes beyond single byte replacements myself that don't break vital functions or crash the game (everytime) :( There's a lot to soak in, your basic work flow system of breaking down an entire function into its discrete hex blocks which correspond exactly to the different lines in the decompiled code is a very important bridge between simple hex-side integer replacements and the "WTF" of the rest of it though. The more one does this, the more one sees patterns and the more easily one is able to isolate the beginning and end of different calls (lines/sub-functions) with in a function. I have this down now, it's just that splicing X into Y where X previously didn't exist usually results in my breaking Y . . . @ Tycus, Differing difficulty levels is a small price to pay for such an amazing control over alien stats. You also said that "damage reduction" is meaningless without "perks" to "go along with it". I don't understand this at all. What is a perk but a function which modifies a general mechanic specific to the unit which has it? The Aliens Upgrade modlet does exactly that on a per-species basis. Damage Reduction via the DGC is a "perk" for all practical purposes, as is Regeneration via the same method etc.

Sorry about the thread necromancy but this is a great thread full of great info anyway. JL said, "Artaban's post suggests he raised the total alien count without raising the pod count, and I'm curious if it worked; if so, it suggests the game adds pods retroactively." This has been my experience. It seems to me that if the pod count exceeds the spawn count on a given map then the game does add pods retroactively as soon as the last alien of the max spawn count is killed. I believe these instances are often mistaken as "teleports". I've had spawns appear right amongst my bloodied survivors as soon as the last Alien they were fighting was killed. For this reason I'm less inclined to use more than 4 pods on any map and have even gone back to using 2 pods on many maps (difficulty thresholds), having implemented a stripped down version of the greater-than-three-per-pod modlet to keep such small spawn counts numerically challenging, alienwise (pods of two, three, four and five are possible).

Wow, great question regarding AI tweaking by Tycus (and welcome) and tantilising answers from Amineri. Amn, where are these priorities handled? -------- To add to JohnnyLump's comments, the Damage Reduction modlet (as well as Regeneration, upgrading over time etc which are all enabled by the same modlet) is well fleshed out on the wiki here: http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Alien_Upgrades_Mod_-_XCOM:EU_2012 Be sure to look closely at the "Mod Configuration Specifics" section which refers to the BalanceMods entires in the DefaultGameCore.ini which you modify in order to activate the features the hex changes provide. You can just have damage reduction for a couple of units and nothing else, or you can give aliens increased damage resistance over time, you can give certain units regeneration or you can have them gain extra hitpoints over time too. You could give a certain species all of the above or none. It's very flexible. It's an excellent modlet as it allows pretty painless end-designer customisation via the DGC.

It's only a negative stereotype if you're against the regime. . . :D Pretty interesting change, wasn't sure these could be modified at all.

As far as I know it's not possible to change the base cover values. I guess as my suggestion above is at least possible, it would be doable in a similar way, but it would require three changes (low, high, flank), with three more changes to the AI and UI etc rather than just the one I'm suggesting here (flank). I wrote a wall (which anticipates your comment) as I'm utterly convinced this is the way to go.

Greets, I've been thinking about the problem of the cover bonus constants and how, at around 65 Aim, it's pretty well implemented, but when aim climbs higher cover becomes more and more meaningless. The really counter-intuitive thing regarding this though is that when in full view without cover (flanking) only the Aim of the attacker matters. And in those situations it never feels like enough. In the early game, cover works for both sides quite well (to due modest aim values) but when you leap off a roof 5 tiles away from an unobstructed Sectoid to get a flanking shot only to read "68%" - and then to miss - then eyebrows are rightly raised. There's been talk here about how shoddy XCOM soldiers are regarding their marksmanship. Increasing Aim cures the flanking issue but renders cover more and more flavourless. I've thought of a great solution, though I'm not sure it's possible; the way the Squadsight Aim Penalty modlet works had me wondering if a similar post-native code function interjection could work to make cover more important. What I think would make the tactical game much better is if a flanking shot earned the attacker +20 Aim. This would need to be balanced by keeping the base Aim of both aliens - and especially XCOM - relatively low through the game compared to Vanilla's superhero creep. 65 Aim vs target in High Cover = 25% chance. ( minus 40) 65 Aim vs target in Low Cover = 45% chance. (minus 20) 65 Aim vs Flanked target = 85% chance. (plus 20) These would then be adjusted for range as normal. That would solve the issue perfectly, no? Balance wise it would warrant nerfing the Aim Bonus per level to avoid 100+ base Aim end-game toons (I think base Aim of 80 - 85 should be the upper limit). Starting Aim could even be reduced to 60. It would also make scopes and aim enhancing perks like Executioner much more useful. (Executioner feels a little superfluous on superhero snipers with scopes as is). For those who want more realism from the tactical game, with cover being ever significant and with much more emphasis on positioning, range and flanking, this would be a great solution. Thoughts? And, can it be done?

Ah, looks Iike I misread you. But again it doesn't seem that bad; I noticed that when I was suppressing a sectoid, in its turn it used mind meld on another sectoid and I actually gained a reaction shot from that (and that 'broke' my suppression though it served its purpose - he didn't fire at me although he was the closest and most threatening alien). So it seems that any action taken by the suppressed will end the suppression but the aim penalty for suppression serves its purpose and the action which breaks the suppression earns the reaction shot, even without having moved. I kinda like this, previously, if a pod rolled up and you suppressed the closest alien, the others would stupidly mind meld with that one (the closest one). Now this isn't so - well I've never seen a suppressed sectoid mind meld another one before (it's often the other way around). This is better to be honest.

Very cool, thanks, you're a machine :D As for the "potentially negative side effect" that could almost be considered a feature rather than a bug. I often suppress a suppressor to break its suppression, allowing the suppressed soldier to move freely. This would mean that those few appropriately perk'd up Colonels are able to break their own suppression though in doing so they 'waste' one of their "super-perk" shots. Fair enough. I'll run with this as standard and report any further oddities (if there are any to report).

Great to see some attention being given to Covering Fire! I've thrown it in and began testing it quite extensively, though I'm using an early saved game so if that's at all problematic do let me know. As far as triggering on enemy movement and firing it appears to work fine, though as yet I can't quite tell if it's an improvement - I'm still missing most (all?) of my covering fire shots, though as I said these guys are scopeless Corporals largely. One problem I have noticed: When suppressing, the suppression appears to be working as normal (ie: the target displays typical 'being suppressed' behaviour - reloading, skipping turn, hunkering down, rarely firing, not moving) but the animation for the suppression fire does not initiate; there is no bullet spam and nice muzzle flare happening at all. Just the audio queue "Suppressing, Commander!" and a single 'normal' burst of fire. Suppression is inherent to the weapons (assaults, LMG's) in my game, granted via the DGC and not via the perk, if that at all matters. I believe this symptom also presents itself when the aliens are suppressing XCOM too (i indeed take an aim hit and if I choose to move the alien gets his reaction shot, there's just no spam). Great improvement though if it indeed works as intended, mechanics-wise. Just looks like it might need a little tweak to ensure that the 'suppression spam' actually takes place during the turn too.

Not sure how I feel about doing away with Squadsight (as I've grown to love both it and the Aim Penalty modlet) but, "if it was also possible to extend the sight radius for all soldiers based on how far above ground level they are," should be a thing and should have been in this game from the get-go, dagnabbit. So, seconded.

It's similar to situations I've had where a guy in full cover and under the protection of a smoke grenade has been hit and killed before (he wasn't hunkered too though). Hm, perhaps, like many pen and paper systems, a roll of 1 or 100 will always hit? If we could find out exactly what's what concerning these peculiar situations (if it's 'cheating' or simply 'lucky') then doing away with the displayed to-hit chance would be interesting (and probably greatly enhance the immersion). Until then though such a feature-removal should be left alone imo. Ideally it'd be nice if there were three colours for the 'alien head' icons that dynamically updated to give a indicator of poor (red), good (yellow), flanked (green) likelihoods instead of the two currently (yellow for flanked and red for everything else). That'd require quite a bit of new code and the necessity of cracking the method for adding additional textures however. Would be cool though.

*Shakes Fist* Is this at all moddable? Heavies levelling up with LMG's when LMG's have been reclassified as "eWP=Support" is irritating. Is it a native code thing that's not upk accessible that's responsible for this?

Wow, that is weird. Yeah, upload your file and send my a PM, I'll have a look at it.

Hm, What's wrong is maybe that I've forgot what Vanilla's settings actually are. . . Sorry for the inconvenience and lack of exact of exact vanilla-friendly hex values. This is the complete function (mine at the moment) and this will help you make the changes you're looking for: Do a search for the the one you successfully changed (the one I must have gotten right, "Easy"). The others will be nearby in the same location following the same format. If you're having trouble finding any of the lines I posted, you might pin point the location by searching for 00 EC 43 00 00 2C Because the complete call for each threshold is 2C ## 00 EC 43 00 00 2C ## Compare to the spoiler hex to ensure you're in the right place before making changes. When I get the correct Vanilla values I will update my post so as not to confuse anyone else. Let me know if that works for you. Z

This is actually pretty simple, though you'll need a Hex Editor like HxD and then you'll need Toolboks to enable your changes to be read. In HxD, open up XComStrategyGame.upk (which is in your blahblah/SteamApps/Common/XCom-Enemy-Unknown/XComGame/CookedPCConsole and do a find/replace for the following hex line. Mission Difficulty 0 (Easy) Find: 2C 02 0F 00 EC 43 00 00 2C 04 2C 02 here defines the number of pods (spawns) and the 2C 04 towards the end defines the maximum number of aliens. Integers are almost always preceded by the '2C' or '24' token in hex here (and are of course hexadecimal). So, this line means 2 pods and 4 aliens, which is why you're seeing 2 pods of 2 aliens. Pods will be built according to these values, so if you set 3 pods and 8 aliens then you will see 2 pods of 3 aliens and one pod of 2 aliens. (3 + 3 + 2 = 3 pods, 8 aliens). You wanted 6 aliens at the easy level, so that would look like: Replace: 2C 02 0F 00 EC 43 00 00 2C 06 This will give you 2 pods of three aliens = 6 aliens. The other difficulty thresholds and the changes you want are below (I simply added +2 aliens at each threshold) The very first mission is actually defined independently so the changes I wrote only affect Abduction missions (UFO's are handled elsewhere on a per type of UFO basis) You can also increase the number of pods too but in my experience 5 is probably the highest you'll want. Most of the maps only have four spawn points, so you can risk some nasty insta-spawns when you exceed it. Another vital program for browsing the decomplied code of the upks is called UE Explorer. You might like to try either the Warspace, Merciless or Long War overhaul mods and tweak them to taste as they're all very feature rich and have done all of this sort of thing (and much more) already. The mods are moddable, so if there's something you don't like and you're willing to get under the hood anyway, you might find that tweaking one of the mods I mentioned is the best way to go. If you've only played Vanilla so far, you're doing it wrong. :D Happy hexificating.