XCOM EU Marathon rebalance

[euskai]

I´ve been trying the marathon option in second wave, because I feel vanilla rushes you too much to the end game, but it seems it could have a little more balance.

 

Increased time and costs are OK, but grey market gives you too much money, which doesn´t make sense as you will be doing more missions and getting more stuff.

 

There´s a problem with soldier progression too, as more missions means more veterans, and veterans unbalance things quickly. I´d go as far as tweaking most of the skills that are clearly OP, specially at higher levels (double tap with 100% hit and 80% crit???), but making progression slower could work too. Maybe just a little slower than normal at the beginning, at much slower for the higher levels.

 

Or maybe both skill nerf and slower progression.....

 

Not sure about engineering, research, foundry... but they would need increased costs too compared to vanilla.

 

So overall, it would be nice to have a well balanced marathon option (extras like see UFOs in abductions and terror or anticheat for AI would be nice too).

 

Just my 2 cents, in case anyone wants to mod marathon.

[PepprmintButler]

Engineering costs are already doubled from vanilla, just like grey market prices. Since mission rewards are not upped from vanilla, I feel the financial balance is quite good.

I am in November in my classic marathon playthrough, and at least it feels quite balanced up to this point.

 

On the other hand you do get boatloads of fragments, alloys and elerium so nerfing the droprates may be a good idea.

If I did sell the surplus of these I would indeed be indecently rich. I'd rather modify the droprates (cut everything in half ?) that change grey market values. Especially since we do not have access, afaik, to modifiable market values while we can change the drop rates easily !

 

I did not test for a modifier in exp gain, so not sure if there is one active already, but it did not feel that quick. I got my first cols a bit after the base invasion bit iirc, which is consistent with my vanilla playthrough I think (almost no deaths in both cases). Disclaimer, this is totally from memory and mine is far from trustworthy, so I might be talking out my other end here. Anyway I would not mind to have the road to colonel made a bit longer - even for non-marathon, actually. Again it is easy to do, you just need to change the xp needed for each rank.

 

Double dip snipers are clearly OP, but that's not specific to marathon. They shredded everything for me in vanilla too.

 

by the way, those of you doing Marathon should look out for that weird bug I encountered : I find myself needing 2 emitters to build the hyperwave relay, but the base assault only gave me one. It is unlikely that I will get another (2nd base invasion would be awesome but that seems highly unlikely) so I'm stuck.

Upping the drop rate of the emitter to 200% may or may not provide a fix, did not try yet.

Edited October 16, 2012 by PepprmintButler

[euskai]

I can´t understand why if you are doing more missions and getting more stuff gray market prices are doubled. They should be the same or less.

 

You are right about skills, they are OP in any case, I´m changing the exp values in every mod I try so 2 top levels are just not reachable and the rest are harder (needs some tweaks, like req for squad size)

 

Rewards should be lowered too (alloys, etc...), does anyone know how is it done?

 

About the bug I´ll probably play a marathon game and see what happens.