Mutonized Mod

[mutonizer]

Welcome to the MUTONIZED Mod thread.

 

It's now released: http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/33/

 

While there are plenty (and more everyday) mods popping up, I of course could not find what I wanted. Of course, people can make their own quite easily now, but here is my version currently in testing (changes are done, just making sure they work proper and on the long run).

 

This mod will be balanced around:

- Impossible Difficulty: While the AIM and CRIT bonus are removed from enemies, I wanted more of them as you can find on impossible.

- Second Wave enabled with "Not Created Equally" and "Absolutely Critical" Enabled. These two options are the most stable that I could find and REALLY enhance gameplay. The first gives much needed variations to the soldiers (so that now, you give a damn between a total sucker and a new rambo). The second is just game changer since it REALLY rewards flanking (100% critical hit chance as soon as you flank anything, or are flanked. You do NOT want to be flanked!).

 

UFOs will pop up, missions will pop up, abductions will pop up. It's gonna pop up and pop a LOT.

 

The Panic will be balanced so that it's doable, but at the end of the day, the goal is to NOT be easily able to control the air until you're really rocking with top of the line stuff. If I can get the feeling of "Oh crap I cannot manage all that!!" that you should feel at the beginning, then I'll be happy

Research times are DOUBLED for everything. This alone makes scientists much needed, unlike vanilla. It also suddenly makes South America crucial early on, due to tech rush you can do.

 

Overall, all changes are done and I'm moving forward nicely in my playtest campaign and I like the pace so far, with just a couple tweaks here and there. Hopefully I'll be able to publish the first version before the weekend, and keep tuning it afterwards.

 

Comments are of course welcome. I'll post updated here once I have some.

 

MUTONIZED v0.3, 20/10/2012

 

- Soldier random starting statistics narrowed to further avoid "soldier roulette" syndrome. Sadly the game only randomize by multiples of 5, but it became apparent that soldiers with 50 AIM were too much of a nuisance, especially when you can can be on the short end of the random drawing stick so easily.

- Workshop "multiples" lowered to be on par with laboratories now so that you don't end up not having enough engineers to build new workshops (was a bit stupid as default).

- Thinman HP slightly lowered. Thinman are DEADLY, but now with their HP at 3, they can be killed with one grenade if you choose to do so. That keeps them as a big threat (since this is still impossible, so tons of spawns), but now provides a better choice between the corpses or just...surviving, especially during council missions.

 

MUTONIZED v0.2, 19/10/2012

 

- Lowered floater HP and mobility slightly. This is to lower the effects of their totally screwed up pathing, and make them less murderous with the flanking 100% crit change.

- Lowered Chryssalid HP slightly. These guys are supposed to swarm you on impossible (since zombies appear even in fog of war) but not take an entire squad to down.

- Increased Sniper mobility. Seemed logical and more interesting for either level 2 perks choice.

- Lowered Cyberdisc mobility. cf. Floater change above.

 

 

 

MUTONIZED v0.1, 18/10/2012

 

ITEMS

- All armors give more HP.

- Titan armor mobility reduced but will now offer 2 backpack slots.

- Archangel armor mobility reduced slightly but will now offer 2 backpack slots.

- All pistols (but laser pistol) will have ammunitions and therefore needs reloading.

- All laser weapons no longer need to be reloaded.

- All laser weapons will have slightly lower critical chance.

- All plasma weapons will have slightly lower aim.

- All plasma weapons will have slightly improved critical chance.

- All relevant weapons will have reduced environmental damage (no more one hit destruction of walls by plasma pistols).

- Ballistic pistol maximum damage upped. It's now on par with laser damage.

- All Sniper rifles will now include an Aim penalty. This makes them need a SCOPE (sniper rifle, heh!) to compensate.

- All Shotguns damage slightly improved.

- Arc Thrower is now a pistol and goes into the SideArm slot. In battle, you will need to swap to it as you would a pistol to use the ability.

- Frag Grenade now has increased range (same as Alien Grenade)

- Alien Grenade now has a slightly increased explosion radius.

 

SOLDIERS

- All soldiers now start with 2HP.

- Supports will gain slightly more WILL through levelling.

- Heavies will gain much more HP now.

- Heaavies will start with very reduced mobility, and it will get slightly better as they level.

- Assault will have better mobility, but lower Aim.

- Snipers will gain almost no HP overall.

- Tuned the LOW & HIGH for random soldiers so that you don't feel the need to do "Soldier roulette" all the time.

 

GENERAL TACTICAL LAYER

- Removed all Aim and Crit bonus on Impossible & Classic Difficulty.

- Rest of the difficulty effects for enemies are unchanged

- "Close Range" is now 10 tiles.

- Shotguns made even less useful at range but more useful at close range.

- Sniper rifles made a LOT less usable at close range.

- Panicked troops will no longer shoot friendlies (whoever did that needs to be shot!)

- Maximum critical hit damage reduced to 50% more than maximum weapon damage.

 

GENERAL STRATEGIC LAYER

- ALL research times are doubled. This includes Autopsies and Interrogations as well.

 

- The Council will pop up missions more often.

- More UFOs will show on the Geoscape.

- UFOs on mission will show on the Geoscape.

- Overall, there will be much more Geoscape action.

- Crashed UFOs will now stay 96 hours.

- Landed UFOs will now stay 72 hours.

- Terror & Abduction missions now last 48 hours.

 

- Laboratories now only need 5 scientists to build. You can now build them from the start.

- Workshops now only need 5 engineers to build. You can now build them from the start.

- PSI Labs now accept up to 8 people at the same time.

- Buldings will now take 2 days to destroy.

 

- Unchecked Terror mission WILL frak up the country a lot, and affect the continent slightly.

- Shooting down a UFO will slightly reduce panic but civilians don't care if you raid it afterwards.

- Abductions will barely move a continent (wether you defeat it or not). Countries targetted will still be "moved" however of course.

- Starting panic level reduced to 8 total.

 

- Satellites now take 10 days to build.

- Starting number of soldiers up to 20.

 

- Second Wave Enabled.

Edited October 21, 2012 by mutonizer

[PepprmintButler]

- The Council will pop up missions more often.

 

How did you manage to do that ..?

 

Mod looks like good fun overall. Will give it a go when I'm done working on my own...

[Kaerar]

There's a setting in the .mod/.ini that sets the base council mission days and then a random factor on top. Original settings are base of 20 days and rand of 7.

 

Interesting choice of changes there. I like the idea of a lot of them, though with the ballistic damage increase to similar to Laser doesn't that reduce the point of Laser's even though they get no reload advantage? Timing reloads isn't that hard (though on impossible that might be a little different) so skipping Laser and going straight for Plasma would be a much more advantageous route...

[PepprmintButler]

There's a setting in the .mod/.ini that sets the base council mission days and then a random factor on top. Original settings are base of 20 days and rand of 7.

 

Oh OK then, I thought that setting was for duration of requests, not time between missions. I think I tried setting to 1/1 but did not get a council mission every other day. Must have done something wrong I guess.

Thanks for the pointers.

[mutonizer]

Interesting choice of changes there. I like the idea of a lot of them, though with the ballistic damage increase to similar to Laser doesn't that reduce the point of Laser's even though they get no reload advantage? Timing reloads isn't that hard (though on impossible that might be a little different) so skipping Laser and going straight for Plasma would be a much more advantageous route...

 

Only the basic pistol is on par with the laser pistol, not the entire ballistic weapon set, the only difference now being the reloading needed for the ballistic pistol. The laser weapons overall are better still, especially with the no reload, though you can of course time it. The mod is designed around playing impossible difficulty with SW flanking auto crit so there's quite a bit of enemies and reloading is a tad more tactical because of it. The biggest advantage is of course for the heavy laser, which can suppress nicely.

Going directly to plasma is...well that's gonna take some time with double research times and while plasma is nice, you'll want them only on people with good AIM to offset the AIM penalty on them.

 

For the council missions, I consider the 2 variables as: time for checks (20 days default) and minimum delay between missions (7 days). It seems to fit with what I tried but there seems to be a slight random factor involved as well. I simply lowered the time for checks slightly and it seemed to do the trick though what I'm testing now is the "fun factor" of it since there arn't that many council missions and some might be "only once", especially the rescues. There are however 2 generic council missions: bomb and military cargo.

 

It's still being tuned though. I'll update later on.

[Gazzzz]

- PSI Labs now accept up to 8 people at the same time.

How did you make the "add" button accessible for more than 4 soldiers?

[Ichthyic]

- PSI Labs now accept up to 8 people at the same time.

How did you make the "add" button accessible for more than 4 soldiers?

 

seconded. the UI cuts off half of the 4th slot even.

 

did you manage to access the UI and change that?

[mutonizer]

- PSI Labs now accept up to 8 people at the same time.

How did you make the "add" button accessible for more than 4 soldiers?

 

seconded. the UI cuts off half of the 4th slot even.

 

did you manage to access the UI and change that?

 

I was going as per Xionanx findings for that and he didn't seem to have any issue with it. I'll double check once possible and report what I find.

[mutonizer]

Here is a quick update taken from the Wiki:

 

While it's possible to add any value between 1 and 255, any value over 3 scramble the UI control, the 4th selection is still visible but from the 5th and over seems to be not. Theoretically it's possible to use the keyboard for selection even when the entry is not visible, descending as you go.

 

So it seems to be a simple display issue and we can't change that until we can repack the UPK files handling the PSILab UI. I'll try using the keyboard once I get my save to that point, but I'm still tuning earlier stuff (getting my teeth kicked in for now!)

[Tosh1500]

How do we download this mod?