anUser

Hmmm.... it'd be so sweet if we could lower overwatch penalty and increase dash defense bonus. What's wrong with constants in this game?

I'll have to try it myself, it sounds promising How do you handle crashed ufos? I must admit I don't even know the default behaviour cause I do all the missions, but having more ufos flying around I guess I'll want to skip some... do they trigger abductions or some other mission, incur in panic, etc?

ok man I just needed to take a break and look at it again... now it makes sense. I was wondering why I hadn't stumbled upon such case... obviously, 'cause game prevents abductions from happening where's a satellite. I missed that one. So with this other upk change, what happens after you shot down the scouts? Do you get the abductors flying as well or directly the abduction missions? btw, is there any way to prevent terror mission ships to be shown? It is ridiculous when you face a battleship by the end of the second month....

I've been experimenting with weapons so I'll share what I've found: A weapon doesn't need the eWP_Rifle property to be in the main weapon slot. itemSize seems to determine this. A weapon with no property and size Large will take the main weapon slot. A weapon with no property and size small will occupy an icon slot (same as grenades and medikits) and therefor will be unselectable. A weapon with the eWP_Pistol property will take the pistol slot. If it's size is small, it's ok, if it's large, it will appear as well as a main weapon, being able to carry the same weapon twice. Once you swap to the secondary one, they both merge into one weapon visually, but it setill works ok. The icon of the weapon turned to pistol will be a bit wrong and appearing always full of ammo when that weapon is selected, but switching to the main weapon will show it properly. The eWP_Heavy property makes: 1) a weapon available to the Heavy class -- unless it also has the eWP_Rifle property, in this case that one takes precedence. 2) makes the weapon last for 3 rounds (before ammo conservation project is researched) instead of 4. 3) makes the weapon uses the AIM_CLIMB bonus. It can be given to alien weapons to make them have to reload more often. The eWP_Assault property can be given to any weapon, including alien weapons, and it makes: 1) the weapon available to Assault class, 2) the weapon will use the ASSAULT_AIM_CLIMB bonus and penalty. The eWP_Support property makes a weapon available to the support class, and it's unrelated to AIM_CLIMB setting, so a weapon belonging to only support will have constant aim. eWP_Sniper makes the weapon avaiable to snipers and makes it uses the SNIPER_AIM_CLIMB setting. haven't tested properly but it seems to me that you can stack all those range bonus and penalties to make a non-linear aim climb and sadly, critical chance doesn't seem to work on explosives, not even at 100

Hey guys you've done a great work here. Thanks for all the code and explanations. I'm sure I'll use some of it myself... when (and if) I can make myself clear with so many stuff... I don't get this: ... do you mean here that by shooting down a scout, when the abduction happened, you only had 2 destinations to choose from? That'd be awesome. If so, how can I make it? It is still unclear to me how this ShowUFOSonMission works. Does it show every ufo flying around the earth or only where you have a satellite? If it's the second one, and I'd hex edit that function to make it picks every country for abductions, could I recreate the scenario I mentioned avobe? I picture it like this: I can see 2 ufos flying in countries where I have satellites, it happens that I manage to shoot both of them down, and then next day an abduction mission prompts out with only 1 destination, the one corresponding to the ufo I haven't seen 'cause of satellite coverage (assuming they pick 3 destinations for abductions). Is it really so awesome? Btw I'm curious to see how you put all this together, there's so many related settings (ufo stats, panic, loot, map rotation, etc) I'd like to see some "comprehensive / integrated" setup. I'm not asking for a mod, but just a small list of tweaks and settings that work well together, that'd be cool.

I've found the ammo capacity to be aquite major factor right at the beginning, only 3 shots before reloading when you're playing with 4 soldiers and the AI has spawned 6 sectoids may be harsh. But for me the biggest difference is in the LMG, without the Heavy property and the suppression ability being the first one, they can now suppress twice in a row, or more likely they can shoot for 3 turns and on the 4th keep watch while squadmates reload. I've to admit I never liked squadsight nor the fact of having a Sniper over a Sharpshooter. The difference is slim, but conceptually significative. Snipers camp on the hills, sharpshooters stand a few meters behind theassaulting forces. So I've toyed as well with the idea of giving the sniper class a rifle, but I cannot make myself clear on this, cause whenever it's a choice (rifle or sniper) I always pick the sniper, and having both available (by placing the sniper on the pistol slot) seems abusive, so in the end it feels that gunslinger is the answer. Btw, no workaround needed, if you want your sniper to use an assault rifle just give the weapon the eWP_Sniper property, but mind now that this weapon will use the SNIPER_AIM_CLIMB setting (too, I think they all stack). Nothing to worry about if you set it to 0 though.

Thanks for your answers. I'll try this view buffer option and see if I can get to make some changes now. I was thinking that if constants can't be changed we can always overwritte wherever they're used with something else, but if they aren't even used... well, all the same, maybe instead of changing the value that *should* set the number of smoke grenades, we can go to the function that adds the ability and replace a 1 for a2 (in their hex equivalents) regardless of the constant, right? Or is thee some other limitation I'm not aware of? Btw, I was just looking at the line graa posted here and I've noticed there's no 2C preceeding the integer value, which makes me think that perhaps it's not an integer but maybe a pointer to some position in memory or a reference toa global object the game treats differently?? I know that programming languages tend to treat constants differently, using less memory for them than they would use for a variable of the same type... can this have smething to do with your issue?

That's the point, giving each weapon the eWP_Heavy property except machineguns, which now belong to Support, so now rifles, pistols and shotguns allow for 3 shots while non-heavy weapons (not tagged with eWP_Heavy, ie machineguns and snipers) allow for 4 shots. Nope, you just need to give the weapon the eWP_Sniper property. The eWP_Rifle property seems only to make the weapon available to Assault and Support class, and make it unavailable to heavy in case it also has the eWP_Heavy property, but in my experience that's unrelated to suppression. but yeah I agree the weapon system it's a mess, each property seems to have more than one effect and balancing them isn't easy.

You're right, they're there. Thanks mate. That's odd... I thought you could change everything you wanted from the upk as long as the byte sum was exact and the code correct. Anyway, how did you locate that line in the hex? Did you have to guess what the line looks like or there's some search mechanism you can use? anUSer

Since there are so many interesting ideas here I thought I could share my skills and weapons set up too. I'm currently playing with a setup where rifles and pistols have long range aim penalty as well as shotguns, whereas snipers and machineguns don't have neither close range bonus or long range penalty. Moreover, I also gave the eWP_Assault property to alien weapons, so now they also have both close range bonus and long range penalty. Only this simple detail changes the game dramatically into a more tactical fashion. As for the abilities I didn't like it the Heavy class, I wanted a pure Machine Gunner and a Demolition expert to be two completely different things, as they serve completely different purpouses, so I moved the machineguns to Support class, and gave Heavy only rifle, but also gave the eWP_Heavy property to rifles and pistols (a weapon with the heavy property have only 3 rounds, whereas other have 4, before ammo conservation), so now rifles and pistols reload more often than machineguns. And, as there's no support, the heavy class became a demolition man and a tools-man, and the sniper became paramedic as well. Here's the skills list I'm currently playing with. I've tried to make it so the first choice is the aggressive, pro-active one, while the second is the defensive, reactive one: Sniper / Medic (Sniper Class) 1 Snap Shot 10 2 Head Shot 02 Covering fire 2F 3 Gunslinger 5f Field Medic 30 4 Aggression 20 Savior 37 5 Bring 'Em On 27 Opportunist 0A 6 Damn Good Ground 0F 7 Double Tap 0D Sentinel 36 Demolition (Heavy Class) 1 Fire Rocket 12 2 Grenadier 18 Smoke Grenade 2C 3 Shredder Rocket 16 Field Medic 30 4 Executioner 0B Smoke & Mirrors 5C 5 Danger Zone 19 Rifle Suppression 31 6 Extra Conditioning 1B 7 Bullet Swarm 1A Rocketeer 5d Scout / Front-Line Soldier / Hunter (Assault Class) 1 Run & Gun 06 2 Close and Personal 22 Tactical Sense 21 3 Sprinter 1F Lightning Reflexes 23 4 Rapid Fire 24 Holo-Targeting 13 5 Killer Instinct 29 Low Profile 05 6 Close Combat spec 28 7 Aggression 20 Will to Survive 11 Machine Gunner (Support Class) 1 Suppression 15 2 Rapid Fire 24 Rapid Reaction 17 3 Mayhem 5E Covering Fire 2F 4 Snap Shot* 10 Opportunist 0A 5 HEAT Ammo 5B Holo-Targeting 13 6 Danger Zone 19 7 In the Zone 0E Resilience 2B * Heavy Laser and Heavy Plasma (but not LMG) require Snap-shot to move and fire. LMG gets -10 aim, sniper +5 aim, shotgun -5 aim laser weapons, +5 aim, exception heavy laser +0 aim, but maybe snapshot penalty all laser weapons -10 aim, except pistol and light rifle (-5). Anyway, in the end choosing which skill should better fit which slot is a matter of taste, but for those who enjoy a hard game I think the key is trying to make each choice as hard as possible. Now that I've been playing for a while with this setup I realize I make my choices too fast, so maybe I should pair those I choose without hesitation and those I discard, respectively. I hope I'd brought some fresh ideas for your modded game. ANusER

Hi, I've recently learned how to change the ability trees using a hex editor and how to play around with the ini file and modpatcher, so now I wanted to change things like the crit chance from Headshot, or the defensive bonus from Tactical sense, etc, but so far I've been uable to locate where they're declared. On XComGame.int there are lines like this one: m_strPassiveTxt[ePerk_Aggression]=Confers +<XGAbility:AggressionCritBonusPerEnemy/>% critical chance per enemy in sight (max +<XGAbility:AggressionCritBonusMax/>%) ... which suggest those values are stored somewhere, but under XGAbility class in XComGame.upk there's only this: const BUBONIC_CURE_COUNT = 5; const GUNSLINGER_DAMAGE_BONUS = 2; const SHREDDER_ROCKET_DAMAGE_MULTIPLIER = 0.33f; Any clue where all the other values could be defined? ... and, in case someone founded it, or if I just wanted to change these values avobe, how can I know where to find those values inside the hex editor? I mean, changing the abilities trees it's easy beacause you're always looking for a pattern (04 2C ?? 06) that's always the same and that fortunately it isn't repeated elsewhere, so knowing the abilities' code and it's current order it's all you need, ... but in this case... what's the procedure? Should I figure up the surrounding bytes to Ctrl-F safely, or is there some way to check inside the UE Explorer the position of highligted text, or is there some other way to achieve this? I'd really appreciate some clue on this. Btw I'd like to thank in my first post all the people that keep this modding community up. Anything I've needed I've found it here on the nexus, and man, my XCom is soo much superior now that's modded than it's ever been. Thank you so much! I hope in time I can give something back from what I'm learning. anusER