PaxEmpyrean

It would be a whole lot tricker than just adding eWP_AnyClass. Adding eWP_Heavy is what knocked your ammo count down. Just adding eWP_AnyClass allows everyone to use it, including Heavies, and doesn't give it the LMG's crappy ammo count.

In EU, In the Zone worked with any weapon. With the release of EW, it only works with sniper rifles. I'd like to reverse this change. How do I go about doing this?

This looks like a solution to an imaginary problem. The game uses credits, not dollars.

The trick to custom ability trees is to rebuild them each time you play through the game. Mix up abilities, start over, play through the game and see how it goes. Finished my fifth rebuild now. Some abilities require prerequisites to function properly. If you have Smoke Grenade anywhere but the starting slot, other abilities based on it have no effect if they are chosen and Smoke Grenade is not, which makes a single ability choice the same as choosing a whole block of alternative abilities. To make it so this isn't actually a problem, I just make sure the alternative abilities all complement each other well to begin with. The alternative is to make it so prerequisite abilities sit at the top of every ability tree like they do now so that player skill picks are idiot-proof, but that kind of sucks. Idiot-proofing is only worthwhile if you care about idiots.

If they've changed anything, when they search for it they won't find it. The five hex code only works if they're playing with unmodified values. If they've added the same ability elsewhere, they'll get duplicate results as well. Specifically I'm talking about the offset. When you open up XComGame.upk with a hex editor and search for to 04 2C 12 06 4A (which is the default for Fire Rocket as the first ability in the Heavy tree) and move the cursor over the 12, your hex editor (they should all have this, so the one you use doesn't matter) should display an offset value somewhere to show you exactly how far into the file you're looking. The offset for the first ability in the Heavy tree is 6D6613. No matter what you change the ability in that slot to, the offset remains the same because it's just telling you where the value is, not what it is. I posted the list a while ago. Here it is again: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/891202-quick-list-of-abilities-and-their-offsets-in-decompressed-xcomgameupk/

People, listing an ability as five values (like 04 2C 5C 06 86) is liable to screw something up when people start moving them around, because one of the values on the end indicates that an ability is the last for that class. Only the middle value (5C in the example I gave) matters. Only change the middle value. Listing a bunch of values so people can search for it is bad form. Just give the address for the values that you need to change and you can change it as much as you want. Searching for clumps of data instead of knowing where the data is supposed to be is useless if they've already changed it.

The game offers aim bonuses for short range. Starting at about half of max visual distance, the bonuses incrementally increase up to about +40% for point blank range with normal weapons.

It depends on what sort of build I'm going for. I've rebuilt the weapons from scratch, so performance is quite a bit different and it's not completely comparable to the vanilla game. In addition to the weapons overhaul, I changed the value for "close range" so that it's half again as far, and reduced the range climb bonuses so that accuracy adjusts more gradually for all weapons instead of shooting up once you're within an arbitrarily close distance. That being said, I really like having a left branch Sniper with a shotgun. If you're just sitting in cover trading shots doesn't have much to commend it except for Low Profile, but In the Zone lets you pull off all sorts of crazy skirmishing tactics, like moving out into an open area where you have an enemy flanked, killing him, and then moving back to cover. Nothing else plays quite like it, and it's a ton of fun. I play with Absolutely Critical enabled, so flanking is a huge deal and Bring 'em On can really add a lot of damage to make sure you kill your target; if you don't drop them in one shot, In the Zone doesn't kick in and you're left standing out in the open, so it's better for finishing wounded enemies or mopping up trash like Thin Men, Sectoids, and Floaters. I also give that Sniper an Arc Thrower, because when it's used as a pistol it works with In the Zone to allow you to move after you successfully stun a flanked alien. Very handy. I've modified all the armors in my game to keep them all useful throughout. I've added an extra inventory slot to the Carapace and Archangel armors only. Inventory items have a little bigger effect in my game, so Deep Pockets is definitely worth taking. It's like a perk that gives a S.C.O.P.E. or a Chitin Plating, and that's a big deal. Both are viable approaches. By splitting up the medic and smoke abilities so that they show up at different ranks, it's possible to make a fully defensive Support with Field Medic, Savior, and two smoke grenades with Dense Smoke along with Sprinter and Deep Pockets. My last play through had two Supports with Field Medic, but both took Rapid Fire instead of Savior. I had plenty of medkits and my guys packed more punch than Supports usually do, which was a very good setup. The other choice is between Smoke and Overwatch skills; a Support with Opportunist, Sentinel, and Covering Fire is really, really good at reaction fighting. Either way is viable, or you can take one of each. This is my fourth rebuild of the ability trees. Mostly what I've been going for this time is synergy and thematic consistency with each branch. Toward that end, Damn Good Ground isn't usually all that great of a skill, but it does work well with the skills above it in the tree for a Heavy that focuses on improving their performance with the LMG instead of just trying to get more/bigger explosions. It's easy to make combos that are brokenly overpowered; my main goal has been to make builds that include skills that complement each other to reinforce distinct playstyles for different builds, while still offering a challenge. Grenadier really needs either Deep Pockets or modded armor with two slots for it to be much good. I've modded my grenades (go figure, I've modded everything) to give them longer range and a wider blast radius, so they're a little better now than they used to be. I think for my next play though, I'll try swapping out Grenadier and Close and Personal in the Assault tree for Sprinter and Gunslinger. Close and Personal is rendered obsolete due to Absolutely Critical and Grenadier, like I said, needs an extra slot to be any good.

I've been rebuilding the skill trees in my mod after each play through, and I'm on my fifth iteration by now. I've removed skills that I don't particularly like, shuffled some other skills around. The latest iteration follows, offering at least two distinct and viable builds for each class, following the left/right options for convenience. I've also opened up shotguns and assault rifles for all non-heavy classes and made some other tweaks to stat progression, but this should give some idea of what I've found to be a lot of fun. Again, skills that synergize well for a specific role typically end up on the same side of the skill tree. HEAVY Left branch is explosions and AoE stuff, right branch is all about shooting. Fire Rocket Suppression or Flush Rocketeer or Bullet Swarm Danger Zone or Holo-Targeting Shredder Rocket or Rapid Reaction HEAT Ammo Mayhem or Damn Good Ground ASSAULT Left branch is designed with shotguns in mind. The right branch has a bunch of bonuses that increase with more enemies in sight; get in some good cover against a lot of opponents for best results. Assault rifles are best for that. Run & Gun Lightning Reflexes or Tactical Sense Grenadier or Aggression Close and Personal or Rifle Suppression Close Combat Spec. or Bring 'em On Rapid Fire Killer Instinct or Resilience SNIPER Left branch is designed around scouting and flanking with a shotgun or assault rifle; it's perfect for skirmishing (move in to flank, flank/kill the enemy, move back to safety) or sneaking around behind and killing enemies who are busy fighting your other forces. Right branch is traditional sniper rifle stuff. In the Zone Battle Scanner or Squad Sight Close Combat Spec. or Snap Shot Lightning Reflexes or Gunslinger Low Profile or Headshot Opportunist Bring 'em On or Disabling Shot SUPPORT Left branch is medic stuff and a bunch of overwatch abilities. Right branch is smoke, frags, and a more proactive approach to firepower. Deep Pockets Field Medic or Grenadier Sentinel or Smoke Grenade Opportunist or Smoke and Mirrors Covering Fire or Dense Smoke Sprinter Savior or Rapid Fire

When switching abilities around, there is only one value that you need to change. For something like 04 2C 15 06 86, the first two values and the last two values don't need to be changed at all. Ever. Only the one in the middle matters. Here is a list of abilities and their offsets that should help you do this more quickly: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/891202-quick-list-of-abilities-and-their-offsets-in-decompressed-xcomgameupk/ Another thing to keep in mind is that the game displays abilities in a way that is a little counter-intuitive. The first ability in the code is the one you get at Squaddie, but the abilities that follow show the ability on the right in the code before the alternative choice on the left. Since English speakers tend to order things left to right, this can throw you off if you expect the second ability in the code to show up on the left. If you listed your abilities from one to twelve in the code based on address, they would show up in the game in this order: 1 3 2 5 4 7 6 9 8 10 12 11

Switching abilities around takes some work. The Visual Perk Editor is helpful, but since it only tells you which values to replace rather than the offset of where those values are stored, it trips over itself when you have multiple instances of a skill in different trees or if you shuffle the skills around in the wrong order. To work around this, and because I'm rebuilding all of the soldier ability trees from scratch, I made a list of which value corresponds to which ability, and the offsets for each. Replacing abilities is as simple as overwriting the value at the listed offset with the value that corresponds to the ability you want instead. You don't need to start a new game for this to work with new soldiers, but existing soldiers get really weird if you mess with their ability trees. Ability Value Location Fire Rocket 12 6D6613 Holo Targeting 13 6D6630 Bullet Swarm 1A 6D6641 Suppression 15 6D665E Shredder Rocket 16 6D666F Rapid Reaction 17 6D668C HEAT Ammo 5b 6D669D Danger Zone 19 6D66BA Grenadier 18 6D66CB Will to Survive 11 6D66DD Mayhem 5e 6D66FA Rocketeer 5d 6D670B Run & Gun 06 6D67D9 Aggression 20 6D67F6 Tactical Sense 21 6D6807 Close and Personal 22 6D6824 Lightning Reflexes 23 6D6835 Rapid Fire 24 6D6852 Flush 25 6D6863 Bring 'em On 27 6D6880 Close Combat 28 6D6891 Extra Conditioning 1b 6D68A3 Killer Instinct 29 6D68C0 Resilience 2b 6D68D1 Headshot 02 6D644D Squadsight 03 6D646A Snap Shot 10 6D647B Damn Good Ground 0f 6D6498 Gunslinger 5f 6D64A9 Battle Scanner 08 6D64C6 Disabling Shot 09 6D64D7 Opportunist 0a 6D64F4 Executioner 0b 6D6505 Low Profile 05 6D6517 Double Tap 0d 6D6534 In the Zone 0e 6D6545 Smoke Grenade 2c 6D699F Covering Fire 2f 6D69BC Sprinter 1f 6D69CD Smoke and Mirrors 5c 6D69EA Field Medic 30 6D69FB Rifle Suppression 31 6D6A18 Revive 38 6D6A29 Combat Drugs 33 6D6A46 Dense Smoke 34 6D6A57 Deep Pockets 35 6D6A69 Sentinel 36 6D6A86 Savior 37 6D6A97

The odds of missing three 95% chance shots in a row is one in eight thousand. It's possible that you're just unlucky, but if that happened to me I'd start collecting data to see if it's just observation bias or if the displayed values and the RNG really are out of sync.

I'm glad to see progress being made on this front. While I don't need to turn XCOM into a Laser Cannon manufacturing business (with alien shooting on the side) like I used to, I'd certainly like to be able to dump my excess equipment for cash if I need it.

If you add eWP_Assault it will have range falloff like a shotgun. If you add eWP_Sniper it will have inverse range falloff like a sniper rifle. AnyClass and Heavy together will allow all classes to use the weapon without any weird range modifiers. The problem with making sniper rifles available to everyone and removing the close range penalty is that you then have a weapon that does more damage than an assault rifle with the same range characteristics, and does the same damage as a shotgun with no long range penalty, and you get better crit modifiers on top of all that.

No, I'm not. I standardized stat growth across classes and added accuracy modifiers to different weapon types instead, with lower damage weapons getting higher accuracy modifiers to make them a viable alternative in the late game. My snipers get bonuses to hit with sniper rifles to compensate for their inherently lower offense stat; vanilla snipers get +40 offense at Colonel, mine get +25. Because I enabled assault rifles and shotguns for all classes, I didn't want snipers to outperform everyone else with those other weapons, so it made sense to tie accuracy to the weapon instead of the class, since I had removed the class restrictions on two of the weapon types. My plasma sniper rifles give +15 offense and actually do less damage than their vanilla counterparts with the same total chance to hit, so no, I'm not making an "easier easy mod." Yeah thats exactly the sort of thing I am talking about - people are out and changing individual weapons traits and *assuming* that they will work *for every weapon* - they dont... just because its in the .ini doesnt mean that modding the numbers produces an actual change "in game". They all need to be tested & verified in-game. Note that I mentioned "both displayed and in practice" explicitly, because I actually tested and verified this myself. I don't know who the hell you think you are, but the next time you find yourself assuming that I don't know what I'm doing, just shut up. I'm not stupid; I don't need somebody to tell me that things need to be tested to confirm they are working. It was the process of testing that revealed this behavior in the first place. I changed the offense modifiers on pistols and in the course of testing to confirm whether those changes actually took effect (amazing, I'm not an utter moron like you were assuming) I noticed that their hit rate was consistent with the offense bonuses from their primary weapon instead of the bonuses I tried to give to pistols.

So far everything seems to be working fine. I might tweak stat progression a bit and add another hit point to the early-game aliens. Once I've gotten far enough to confirm that Psi-gifted rates are working and the SHIV bonuses are functional, I'll share the DefaultGameCore file.

I'm pretty sure this is not true. The random rolls do seem to be affected by offense bonuses; my sniper rifles have +25 offense on them, and either it's working as it should or I've been getting really, really lucky. I have noticed that pistols inherit offense bonuses from the primary weapon, though; my snipers have the same standardized stat progression as my other soldiers, but they're crack shots with pistols because they're getting the +25 offense from the sniper rifles. I tested it by switching out the sniper rifles for assault rifles and their accuracy dropped considerably, both displayed and in practice.

Interrogations and autopsies are pretty fast to begin with, though. Honestly I'd say that Europe's discount for Laboratories and Workshops is a better bet even if you're sat rushing; the savings you get from building Workshops at a discount means you can build a couple of Labs as well, which get you to your research goals even more quickly. If the interrogations and autopsies weren't so fast the bonus would make a much bigger difference.

funny that ¬_¬ What you described in your post involved adding eWP_Sniper and eWP_PreciseShot to a weapon. You don't actually have to add eWP_PreciseShot for a character with that perk to use it with the weapon in question. I'm not just retreading something you already posted about, so spare me the patronizing comments.

What I ended up doing was normalizing stat growth across all classes and used weapon accuracy adjustments to get the desired result. This allows me to swap out different weapons and have different performance even with the same character. I standardized aim progression as follows: 5 5 3 3 3 3 3 The early levels give the biggest gains. I like how it plays this way. The overall effect is for new soldiers to improve quickly at first, then slow down. The high end abilities generally have a huge payoff, so it's not like you need 5 aim bonus at Colonel to make it feel like that's a significant promotion.

Do you have eWP_Heavy listed in the weapon properties? I would assume so if he's able to equip those weapons in the first place, but I'm just making sure.

I haven't seen anyone mention abilities and properties being tied together this way anywhere else. I haven't been syncing abilities and properties in my executable and everything works fine; I have eWP_Heavy on property 1 and eWP_ShotSuppress on ability 1, but suppression isn't restricted to Heavies when using the weapon. I know the post linked to says that it's restricted to the class you list (and I was thanked for providing this information, but I think there was a miscommunication at some point because I only mentioned adding eWP_Heavy to enable heavies to use the weapon in the first place, as eWP_AnyClass doesn't include them). Furthermore, adding eWP_Sniper to a weapon only allows the weapon to use the skills that the Sniper has unlocked. As far as I know, there isn't any way for a weapon to add an ability to characters of a specific class. They can be added to all characters who use it (Shot_Suppress is like this) or they can be enabled to use abilities that the character has, but to my knowledge there is not any way to have (as an example) all Sniper Rifles automatically grand Squad Sight to every Sniper who picks them up.

"Ditch the guys you've used from the start or have a crappy squad" isn't really a very fun choice. Thanks to modding, I don't have to abandon the familiar faces to be most effective; I can keep the squad I like as long as I can keep them alive. I have more fun playing with soldiers who have history; a lot of battles, some close calls where they probably shouldn't have survived but some did, stuff like that. I don't like for their story of fighting the alien threat since the very beginning to end with them being unceremoniously benched because they didn't have brain-magic. At the same time, I don't like being handicapped by my desire to play with the surviving soldiers that I've been using since day one. On a hunch, I added eWP_Sniper to the assault rifle's properties. This enabled Squad Sight as well as Precision Shot for my sniper only, who had those perks. While it seems that eWP_AnyClass allows all non-Heavy classes to use a weapon, if you want them to be able to use their class abilities with that weapon you'll need to add the corresponding class specifically. I noticed the suppression values listed for various weapons as well. They don't seem to do anything. I was a little disappointed that pistols seem to inherit whatever accuracy bonuses you have on your primary weapon. It means that snipers are still more accurate with pistols than other classes are, which was something I wanted to avoid. I also wanted to balance their damage with accuracy bonuses to differentiate them, but since I can't do that I added critical hit bonuses to them instead. Pistols that do less base damage have higher critical hit modifiers, making them somewhat more useful for snipers with the Gunslinger perk. With the full suite of pistol upgrades and the Gunslinger perk, an attack with a pistol is about as good as an attack with an assault rifle, although not as good as a character using Rapid Fire or Bullet Swarm.

The idea with 100% Psi is that you don't handicap yourself if you take your original squad all the way through the game. I get attached to my guys, but I'm also nuts for optimization. I don't like game mechanics that put my desire to optimize on a crash course with my sentimentality.

Do you actually have any idea how to implement this stuff? I can see how some of it works, but as far as I know nobody has even found where all of this stuff is, much less made any changes to it. There aren't even animations for soldiers to use melee attacks, are there?