Comprehensive Stealth/Guerilla Warfare Mod

[TeamDragonpunk]

@Eladdy202 I've created this thread, but happy to use an existing one if you'd like...

 

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) Team Dragonpunk will commit to an existing or new Stealth and/or Guerilla Warfare Mod (coding, 3D assets, sound, etc...) to be complete no later than 1 October.

 

Timeline: We'll certainly try to work within your/the community's timeline, though our goal is to release mods quarterly. The final release of the ModBuddy extension was out April 2nd, and we're still on track to have Co-Op out internally for June 1st, and publicly July 1st. Our commitment for the Stealth Mod would aim for a polished public release of 1 October (1 September for debugging and internal testing with 3D assets, sound files, etc..). It would not have to be a "Dragonpunk Mod" as we're only concerned about the final product, and not who gets the credit.

 

Overview: While there are certainly some great "True Guerilla" Mods already out, this mod would aim to be a comprehensive aggregate of the settings/configurations desired. Players would control these options from a universal screen in the options menu using either the Long War Toolbox or MCM (whatever the community standard becomes). Ideally, this mod would not only adjust ini configs, but be robust enough to drastically alter timer behavior in the Kismet (this may be a stretch goal).

 

Scope: While we'll have to agree on a concrete scope to avoid "feature creep" (this can't be all things to all people unfortunately), the idea is that this mod would be comprehensive enough to become the community standard for Stealth and Guerilla Warfare Mods for both players and the modding community.

 

3D Assets: The team has great 3D artists, and I also know the original XCOM 2 weapons artist on twitter. He's a freelancer out of California. Pending his availability, I would be willing to hire him to create sound suppressors for the Tier 1 weapons (at minimum). We would need to look into the possibility of adding new weapon mods into the game (I assume it can be done, but I haven't confirmed it). Before we go to him however, we would need to have the system completely finalized and our concept artists would propose a few design ideas (he'll prob use his own designs, but it's worth concepting out anyway).

 

Sound Files: To do this well, we would want the correct sound assets for the suppressors. We're currently working with Max who helped Tim Wynn create the XCOM 2 OST. I'm happy to provide some additional funding for his help on this. There may already be existing sound files available for purchase somewhere.

 

Ok, so let's post thoughts and ideas below. Again, we can't commit to any solid work until after 1 June, but if the community can agree on the functionality and capabilities by then, we'll start/assist those who have already started ASAP!

[Deleted32045420User]

OK so far i have a few ideas roughly implemented:

Stealthy Gear: armor,weapons and equipment that will add the ability to the player will reduce his detection radius by other enemies, similar to the SMG mod those will offer some tradeoffs for the higher stealthiness of the weapons - after all you would suspect a guy in a jacket a whole lot less than one with a full armor

 

Suppressed Weapons: those will be tricky to implement without overriding abilities or templates (i think a highlander mod will be a good idea if we want to go with this and just overhaul it significantly) Currently i have set up silenced abilities to be used with silenced weapons, Pistols as main weapons will be very concealable but also do much less damage.

 

Comms Delay: Enemies should only be able to notify other units of XCom being in play if they live through first turn of activation, still need to consider balance and maybe get a "Raise the alarm" ability on the AI trees or leave it as a timer on turns like it is now, right now i have an ability on all soldiers that conceals the squad if within 1 turn of squad concealment broken they have no engaging enemies on the map.

 

Concepts and ideas

 

Smaller Squads: The starting squad size will become smaller at 2 and have upgradability up to 6 soldiers.

 

Smaller yet more numerous pods: Most pods will include either 1-2 lower level enemies+a commander unit OR a strong unit (archeon/andromedon/muton/avatar ect.) to balance out the smaller squad size, will scale with progress and squad size, also there would be more pods to increase by 1.5x-2x the number of enemies on the map, those rewarding stealth but not discouraging attacking the enemy head on.

 

New Mission types and modified mission objectives: abolish the "Neutralize all enemy targets" on most missions, leaving those to the retaliation missions and possibly train raid missions. New missions that demand stealth to be preserved with smaller squad sizes allowed (no more than 3). Abolish the timers (or at least shorten them and stop them from ticking while concealed) while on missions which aren't described as time critical (like crates), New missions to assassinate/abduct a target (without a timer, keep the timed one intact) i can go on and on...

 

New Stealth centred items: Ghost grenade, Special Ammo that does more damage while concealed, miniaturized grenades etc.

 

New Abilities: No Squadsight penalty when concealed, Disrupt re enforcement calls, Incapacitate enemies etc.

 

Now most of these will need some sprite work, sound work and model work, i would also love to have new animations for stealthy units to walk like a civilian and have all kinds of animations for concealed weaponry (like pistols).

 

 

 

[davidlallen]

How does this relate to the guerllia overhaul underway by MalucoMarinero? Given internet names, I cannot tell if any of you are the same people in RL.

[Deleted32045420User]

We are not connected AFAIK, looking at the goals of that project it looks like we have 2 different approaches to tactics, while here we try to make more meaningful choices by allowing players avoid combat with clever planning the Guerrilla war mod will try to make a "long war" of sorts- you will have to be better at managing fights, while some ideas overlap and we do intend for combat to feel harder it's not the main concern of the mod to make the combat a necessary part of every mission

[TeamDragonpunk]

How does this relate to the guerllia overhaul underway by MalucoMarinero? Given internet names, I cannot tell if any of you are the same people in RL.

 

Does he have anything posted here on Nexus? I know he's on Discord and I can reach out to him there. Would like to see where the overlap is and where we all could potentially collaborate. Perhaps he could decouple the configs for the Guerilla aspect. I know we're certainly trying to make out own campaign as well, but are trying to do it in a way that everyone benefits.

[TeamDragonpunk]

For us, and it sounds like eladdy202 as well, we're focused on tactical stealth. We (Dragonpunk) aim to:

 

1. Eliminate the "Neutralize All Enemies" objective

2. Implement "reconcealment mechanics" such as our illusionist mage class and sound suppressors.
2. Use timers/alarm system to spawn more enemy reinforcements so that the player is naturally pushed to complete the objective or evac within a certain amount of turns

3. Find a game balance where the player would have about as many encounters as they do now, but are using the stealth (reconcealment) mechanic to avoid numerous other encounters due to the increased number of enemies or size of the map
4. Encourage out of the box solutions to extraction missions like causing a distraction on the other side of the map that lures patrols away (realize this is open ended and will come with years of game balance testing)

5. Have everything configurable through a single UI that uses the Long War Toolbox Option's Menu.

[Deleted32045420User]

I want to close in on the scope of this mod in 2 weeks time, if you have any core ideas you'd like to offer please do it within the next 2 weeks

[TeamDragonpunk]

I want to close in on the scope of this mod in 2 weeks time, if you have any core ideas you'd like to offer please do it within the next 2 weeks

 

Sounds fair. I see a lot of overlap in ours, which is why I suggested trying to consolidate this in a single UI. Given the new LWS "One Ring" Tuple Mod, I think we won't have to make a highlander mod if we're clever about where we are hooking in.

 

This is the link to Maluco's more strategic guerilla mod. https://github.com/GuerrillaWar/GuerrillaWar

 

Think Dragonpunk share's desire to have exponential reinforcements as well.

[Zyxpsilon]

5. Have everything configurable through a single UI that uses the Long War Toolbox Option's Menu.

 

TBH... even if that LWS newest method to integrate a solid "Options Menu" feature seems to be a most optimal solution to a number of current issues -- it's really too bad that it has been supplied along with other modding assets that broke a few other essential mods (( for me! )) like ShowMeTheSkills or MoreSquadSizeUpgrades or SWRHiddenPotential and some more!

 

Soooo, i can only wish they'll just think about splitting the functionalities of both Tuple & Options-Menu in (somehow) stand-alone products for most of us who'd prefer to keep the familiar mods they currently are satisfied with and NOT loose the extra power devices that may become important later down the curve of modding pipelines. I understand we would be better off making certain critical choices as soon as possible but it's a bit enforced, AFAIC.

[Deleted32045420User]

LWS made Tuple and the options menu separate from all other aspects of LSW toolbox, though i am still undecided on whether to use MCM UI or LWS UI (really as long as the modding community agrees the rest will align our of sheer convenience) Tuple will be used, right now i want to figure out how to change individual instances of a template without changing the template,i'll have to take a look at that and see what i can do