babyjebu5

I can't claim that one: t'was a total mistake! Honestly, I think the existing Assault class could be tweaked to make a good almost-melee-only class. For instance, with such a restriction, it makes no sense to wield anything but a Shotgun - this is good. The abilities should be a mashup that is mostly Assault and a lot of passive abilities where there were active abilities (to make sure the meleeOnly is only circumvented when it doesn't ruin the melee option): Run n Gun Sprinter -or- Lightning Reflexes Smoke -or- Flush Low Profile -or- Aggression Extra Conditioning -or- Killer Instinct Resilience Executioner -or- Will to Survive and you have an awesome melee only class - using a shotgun mind you, but he can't use it from afar due to that MeleeOnly, so it feels more like a greataxe :) and unless he uses Flush (Which I chose for it being the lowest damage attack with the most ammo usage), the only ranged ability in the class, there is no long distance damage option without it - but plenty else to help him out. The Flush ability is a tough choice between Smoke in my opinion, since the smoke will get you in close without getting owned as well as help the team stay alive. The other ranks bring different elements of strategic possibility to the class, so you could play a sneaky devil using smoke, sprint, and low profile, or a ballsy attacker with lightning reflexes, flush, and aggression EDIT: Another great decision point would be at 5th rank, extra conditioning or killer instinct; the HP is huge at that point, and will go well with Resilience, but Killer Instinct makes your best ability even better, and ensures someone dies everytime you hit using Run n Gun. I'd be choosing for awhile I think. The imagery I picture for Flush is throwing the axe at the aliens to get him to move :) and a smoke cloud with axe-wielders running out is a frightening thought indeed. :)

So glad someone is working on this. I could and would use this tool next playthrough. This time around I adopted most of Warspace and merged other little bits by hand. This would make that process easier. While doing so I noticed many balance changes made to fit one mod and not the other, like HP changes to lower HP on "soldier" and then simultaneously increase it on the armors - and another mod that altered armor HP with balance elements on Will. With only one or the other the balance the mod isn't performed as intended (suggestion: could make for a good tooltip or warning when merging mod schemes)

I have not gotten rid of the java error. I am fully updated with java. Are there any other possible dependencies I should look for?

So, I kept reading people wanting melee on their units. So I did a little experiment. I added MeleeOnly to the ini file on those "soldier" ! Well, I checked my soldiers and found none of them could melee. I subsequently lost most of them during that mission gone south, so I found myself recruiting soldiers when I returned without a care for the future. I later reverted to vanilla, and repatched without that MeleeOnly property on "soldier". Gameplay continued... I think you can see where this is going.. There are four troops in my barracks without the ability to fire a normal attack from a weapon, unless at range 1 (adjacent) to a target. That is meleeOnly at work, for sure. It just shows up later, when new recruits are hired, since the previous recruits wouldn't get changed (duh I shoulda known that). Well, I don't know if this is news or anything, but finding this out on a fairly tough cargo mission really scared me but was laughable in the end. I ended up playing overwatch creep style, and then not taking a single hit (like I said, with special firing modes you can still make attacks, and set yourself on overwatch to successfully make reaction shots). But yea, I had noone who could shoot on my orders except my two rookies I brought along for the experience. I don't think my SHIV has done this much killing in a mission via overwatch yet! I digress. The melee attack thing works; its just ingrained into the character from "birth", and removes the ability to fire a normal attack (even if you leave ShotStandard in). Anyways: Is this news (that it does produce a change we can build upon)? If so, I can attach video, explain which lines I changed, post up the file with a patcher, but I doubt that would be necessary since I am a mod newb. The snip I changed should suffice to at least eliminate confusion (lines I edited are styled differently): Observations Notice the PoisonImmunity. I added that one to see if it would work, and I see now that it does prevent poison from killing a thin man with melee. Also, I added Hardened to troops using this. Really makes them troops uber tough to be nearly immune to crits so dont add it to recruits without wanting the game to be much easier. This actually served as a necessary balance factor for the addition of MeleeOnly. Same with PoisonImmunity, since without it the soldier poisons himself anytime he kills a thin man. these meleeOnlys have been in my roster since day 10 (after the first Abduction mission), and are now ranked to Captain (among my best ranked soldiers! funny, that..). I will probably keep them around. The fact they have those extra qualities makes them valuable as overwatch soldiers if nothing else, so I don't plan to exclude them from my missions at all despite the fact they can never actively choose to perform a normal firing action.

They both contain some similar elements, and reading the description of the changes (and usually includes a statement about "why?") is the best way to get a feel for how the mod will play differently from the vanilla game, without actually trying the mod. That should help you decide which one you would enjoy most :) Anyways, yes, I tried em both. I liked Warspace's weapon balance a little more than Balance. I liked the lower HP values of Warspace (recently added), and the results of that. Basically, my love for that mod comes from the fact that armor now absorbs most of the hits, while injuries beyond that put your soldiers out for way longer (like over a month at times!) - this makes the hospital stay increase time a clutch factor in the decision to risk healing out of cover to save a valuable officer from weeks out of the field. Alas...there were lots of good things in both though, and so I went custom-editing a few things I thought were OP, or not hard enough, etc. Working with the defaultgamecore is incredibly easy once you get in there and do a file comparison to the original. Just another tip for you, since I know I had that problem ("Which do I choose!"), and my answer was neither.

Thought about this some more. I would like to see the XP system like it was in Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX). You got a small number of JP (job points = a form of XP) for taking any actions that do something besides Move or Defend. It was something like: "Throw (weak unarmed ranged attack), gain 2 JP. Attack with a weapon or in melee, gain 3 JP. Use a consumable, gain 2 JP. Use a spell, gain 3 JP. etc". That system did a great job of ensuring your support characters would level when using their support abilities, and at the same potential rate per turn. Meanwhile, XCOM's XP system belittles you into sending the rookies in as clean-up crew.

That sounds like an awesome idea. But how to implement...I think there are some on the boards who could do it if they so happen to see this thread, or you message them. Have a look around at threads like these to see who knows how to chop the game up: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/815794-custom-soldier-ability-trees/page__st__40

Tried this as well, since I have a similar error..but it didn't help.

For some reason, it (EDIT: patcher.bat) can't find "java", which its not in the folder where this is being run (EDIT: the base folder, not the deeper win32 one), but I suppose that java not being there shouldn't matter since it ought to be in the system paths, so long as I have Java 1.7+ installed. So what else does this error indicate besides "install Java" since I have the correct release: "Windows cannot find 'java'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and try again." (EDIT: see follow-up post, verified paths are set in the environment variables, but it doesn't seem to register that I did so - as the error continues after many restarts and command prompts, both elevated and not. I am baffled.)

I have this idea, but haven't yet dug into the upks or hex stuff. The fever is growing, now that I have stumbled on this idea. It hopes to keep the angry spirit of the Assault class alive, while providing tactical possibilities for each style of character through its builds. Part of this thinking came upon me while trying to envision why the developers didn't offer Run n Gun at higher level to make it scale more into the strength of the class, moving twice and killing stuff during the enemy turn or on your own. Reason is, putting Will to Survive on the first rank and Run n Gun at the 6th makes the class have quite a long time to wait until it can even do its schtick much better than a Rookie. That ability alone MAKES the Assault class what it is. This fact means I couldn't make it 6th rank in good conscience on this particular iteration of the Assault class. I call it, the Zealot: ASSAULT (ZEALOT) "Do I like my job? I stare aliens in their beady eyes and blast them off their face; I love my job." This class excels at mobile tactical exploitation of an enemy position. Their ability to move as far as other units and accurately attack on the way makes them vital to missions where enemies have holed up in a protected position and need ..removal. Early in the Zealot's training program are learning different approaches to the art that killing close range can be. Abilities Rank 1: Run n' Gun (the basis for the class) Rank 2: Will to Survive || Close and Personal (choose between lessened damage for smart positioning, and huge crits on adjacent/nearby targets) Rank 3: Tactical Sense || Lightning Reflexes (choose between bonus to defense against crowds cover or not but really nice with cover, or take risks and avoid a reaction shot to get in close and hope to pick them off) Rank 4: Aggression || Killer Instinct (choose between extra crit against crowds, or massive extra crit on when using run n' gun - either way you are going to have the highest chance to hit of all the non-snipers on the team at this point so making crits better at this point is nice) Rank 5: Extra Conditioning || Resilience (you need the survivability at this point; choose between the overall HP boost for your tanks, or critical hits immunity - until now the class is a bit squishy without a Support on the team at all times) Rank 6: Flush (the best assault guys can push in, hit fast or hard, and run your unit into a hail of gunfire from his protected buddies - the ability is a must have for the class imho but it gets overshadowed by the also-pivotal Rapid Fire) Rank 7: Close Combat Specialist || Rapid Fire (speaking of, this competes much better with Close Combat Specialist imho - reaction without overwatch or double attack are both amazing game changers, but late game, since Chryssalids are mid game and get easy too quickly due to CCS being 5th rank) Whaddya think?

I thought the same thing. The Snap Shot vs Headshot choice would end up being clutch for the more mobile, mid-range/long-range sniper builds. Emphasis on "used" - do you mean "edit"? or "use"? Because I use the .ini page quite a bit during my testing. though I didn't find anything to add just yet.

deleted.

It would seem "fys" has tested it: Also, I agree it is not O.P. if its takes your whole turn to use; thats a pretty bad drawback when the aliens might be circling to flank.

I have yet to see another scenario like those two (EDIT: three if you count the bridge mission) particular story-driving ones. The DLC is reported to have more of those, but of course that's a cop out: the game itself should have a set of VIP missions (more Council Missions of any kind please) to cycle through.

Experiments failed: Editing the damage value has no effect anymore. Changed it to 5 to no avail. Changing the damage value on the laser pistol made me notice my laser rifle damage is higher than it should be (6, when I set it to 5). When I set it to 1 just now, it again gave me a damage value 1 higher than this (2), telling me there is a damage adjustment made after this. I need to locate these as well it would seem to tell what is causing this issue?

I changed the iDamage value to 3 for laser pistol, added unlimited ammo, but also reduced all pistol ranges to 10, reduced environment damage, and reduced critical chance on lasers, so my heavily-modified laser pistol entry is like this (split up on multiple lines for readability): I lost the original entry for the laser pistol somewhere along the way (my "original" contains at least one change, possibly others); if I had that I could see if reverting entirely undid the damage change (I am sure it would) and then test from there. Alternatively, does anyone have ideas why the damage is always 1 with the laser pistol now?

#1 has been requested here. Watch that thread. #2 can be done. I altered the properties of grenade to include eWP_Pistol instead of eWP_Secondary. Grenades appeared in place of pistol loadout on the first mission, and weapon-switch enables the grenade for a Throw action. I assume that after the first mission, the loadout can be manually changed so I could bring two rookies with rifle-grenade-grenade, and two with rifle-pistol-grenade. I have no save file outside a mission at the moment, or I would test it now. For the other weapons being used by other classes, I would experiment with adding eWP_AnyClass in place of one of the eWP_None properties on the shotgun. If your Support can't equip it, try taking replacing eWP_Assault with eWP_AnyClass instead (be sure to revert eWP_AnyClass to eWP_None so there is only one instance of it though - just to be safe). I am not sure about granting more movement based on weapon loadout just yet. I see no property on weapons which affects movement.

I love that you want to make the most frightening alien in the game even more frightening! (in my humble opinion, those aliens always get priority due to the multiplicative zombie/chryssalid effect) I can see that they have some room for improvement, but I don't like the mutant crackhead chryssalids you want to create! Nonetheless, I like some of your idea for making them more like the original aliens.. 1. If the leap attack covers slightly less ground than a movement, and is usable only once a turn. This at least won't break them by giving them Run n Gun. 2. OMGWTFXCOMBBQ! Too much to do this without balance. Considering their mobility rate in the vanilla game, I would reduce that by a decent amount if they could move twice and attack every turn. like the idea of them moving as far as my troops and getting Run n Gun, but not without some balance to keep it survivable with good tactics. 3. I love this idea: I could get behind giving them the heavy's Bullet Swarm ability, usable with melee attacks and the leap attack (leap attack only once a turn). Heck, give em Rapid Fire while you are at it. Then it could attack, and leap to another target within range. Or attack, then move to cover. Or maul the crap out of someone (with Rapid Fire) who didn't move when the mutant crackhead zombie spider alien ran up in their face. :turned: Frickin scary.

Yea, even the first game in DOS had randomized maps. I think the randomized maps should have received a overhaul rather than getting cut. Like give more attention than it got in XCOM (1994), since there were mixed results with the random generator in the first game. I could see departing from the randomized maps for key missions, to ensure well-designed tactical situations (tough angles of fire to overcome, bad flanking opportunities, elevation difficulties, all this adds to make a map interesting rather than just "a new map"), but then with a little forethought the randomized map issue would be overcome very easily. I appreciate what the map designers did to create a challenging map design each mission, but as the map designer, I would randomize it to the same end. Not entirely random, mind you, but simply set up a few dozen well-designed one-fourth map sections for each terrain type and/or region, then random just the pieces the map builder grabs on mission start; so it will take a random set of 3 pre-bulit map quarters and place those randomly around the start location. This would negate the drawback of random placement being tactically uninteresting, while giving the benefit of generating random layouts that can never be predicted by the player after repeated playthroughs. Simple task if you ask me: start location near restaurant A video store B warehouse A street with buildings on either side D placed like so: 34 21 Next time that combo came up again, it might be placed differently just to ensure that the same map sections coming up (its bound to happen) wouldn't be predictable either: 43 21 thereby presenting a new situation to overcome traversing from the start location+restaurant to the warehouse to the north, rather than to the street with buildings (that was there in the first random selection) etc etc. you get the idea.

Sweet, I was poking around in there before and changed some values but found they didn't do squat. Thanks, since that was the right place to make edits, but it happens that there are tons of entries containing the word "Sectoid" that I could have changed, to alter the alien's name in various instances (but not all). At least any changes I make are loaded on game restart without recooking for easy testing. It is still unclear why there is what appears to be a variable for the localized name of the aliens, but changing those shows me that the variable reference doesn't get used in the other places where the alien names are used; those have their own entries (for the results of autopsy research, for example, I would have to manually edit the entry to reflect the new name I chose for the alien). I guess that would make too much sense to have a single variable containing the alien's localized name, and then have the other localized text entries refer to that variable. :whistling:

Looks great. I have no problems with what you said, I just think it ought to have been said where it won't get buried by other more recent postings - a single sticky'ed link to the Wiki ought to suffice. Wikis are our friend. So my food for thought is this: is the Wiki also serving the purpose of being a research archive? are the forums really a better place for this sort of archival? Consider joining the wiki's member base and adding this info you have so graciously compiled - I am sure the organizers would be happy to help find appropriate homes for any pages you create there. :)

You might try changing the line that begins with the following: Weapons=(iType=eItem_BattleScanner ... eWP_NoReload ..with: eWP_UnlimitedAmmo :) Until we can touch scripts I think that changing the length of the effect is out, unless your fuel idea works.. I am not sure what would happen if you changed: Characters=(iType=eChar_BattleScanner ... FlightFuel=0 to: FlightFuel=1 ..but it could give you a direction to go with it later, at the very least (when we get into altering what Fuel can limit, for example) If we could reduce the duration to one turn, then it would need constant monitoring to be effective (and the above UnlimitedAmmo to be fair). Probably located in scripting; but tell me what happens if you give "FlightFuel=1" to a "Char_BattleScanner" (I guess, literally a character with a battle scanner?) Ha; a funny thought - it might give the character with the scanner movement and flight lol

Well, the OP is still on point: We won't be getting any help on this for awhile. That any of the developers/publishers are intentionally blocking said modding, well that is pure speculation. Its unfortunate that we can't get some honesty though, so we weren't making guesses based on the very-possibly-ambiguous-but-damn-convincing behavior (like the cooking of .ini, requirement to stay offline of Steam not just multiplayer, etc.. there are a lot of good reasons to do that, apart from preventing modding: performance, security, fairness to multiplayer without added expense, as examples). Honesty will never leave the a PR desk at a gaming company though, especially with so many scapegoat reasons (that don't damage the company's reputation) floating around. ::sigh:: I guess whatever negative conclusions we come to will continue to breed, sully their reputation, etc.. ::sarcasm gone:: ..but I really don't feel bad about it since its a natural by-product of a game company being a pain in the ass to same game company's best (and cheapest!) cross-promoters: modders.

I would like to rename and reflavor things like units, equipment, buildings, and foundry/research project titles - so yea, just about everything (if not everything). If I could do the same with the descriptions/flavor text, even better. Example: The Psi Lab would be renamed "Mage Academy", the description for which has an arcane flavor to describe what is going on there to produce "mages."

Sounds like you want the up-and-coming DLC, among other things (mods can achieve most of the leftovers).