Long War mod discussion

[johnnylump]

These hex changes to XComGame.upk should fix it (if I've identified the bug correctly)

 

 

Change

24 19 07 43 02 99 38 3a 1b f1 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 24 2a 16 07 43 02 98 38 3a 1b f1 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 24 2c 16 0f 00 6e b5 00 00 24 19

to

24 01 07 43 02 99 38 3a 1b f1 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 24 2a 16 07 43 02 98 38 3a 1b f1 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 24 2c 16 0f 00 6e b5 00 00 24 01

starting position 00903f6c

Change

24 26 07 f8 02 99 38 3a 1b f1 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 24 2a 16 07 f8 02 98 38 3a 1b f1 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 24 2c 16 0f 00 6e b5 00 00 24 26

to

24 02 07 f8 02 99 38 3a 1b f1 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 24 2a 16 07 f8 02 98 38 3a 1b f1 33 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 24 2c 16 0f 00 6e b5 00 00 24 02

(starting position 0090400d)

 

You'll have to know how to patch in hex changes into the game. Otherwise I hope to get 2.0 Beta 2 out in a few days.

[Nierra]

Thank you very much. Though... I had no idea you're releasing 2.0 version. I mean I downloaded your mod on august 4 or 5 and was playing it so far. So I'll just probably wait for next version of 2.0 for all those new wonderful features.

 

Besides I have no idea what program to use to edit .upk files. I tried notepad, but I have a feeling it won't work that way somehow.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Nierra

[Zoraste]

Hey Johnny, first up, I'd just like to say this mod is pretty fantastic. I'm playing the 2.0 version at the moment and the extra mechanics really add a lot of depth to the game, and, in my humble opinion, make it much more fun and honestly a lot closer to what it should have been to start with. Making Assault troopers that can actually manage to kill enemies without having to let themselves be flanked, Infantry being a solid core trooper than you'd be a fool to do without, and taking Snipers from "Godlike" to merely another solid choice are all incredibly welcome changes, along with the vast variety of loadouts that are possible to fit your troopers with. The "Exhaustion" mechanic is a very good one, forcing me to actually rotate my squads (though some months actually have so many missions as to force me down to rookies, lest I put my big guns out for a bloody month), leading to careful tactical organizations. The number of missions can also be pretty daunting, but fun and challenging.

That said, I do have some constructive criticism here. Mainly concerning the Arc Thrower, and the rewards from missions. I know XCOM is one of those ball-crushingly difficult old-school games, but it seems a little unbalanced when I am receiving so few rewards in the form of alloys and weapon fragments that by the time Mutons are showing up, I scarcely have one or two laser weapons to my name, and no upgraded armor whatsoever. The sheer inability for basic ballistic weaponry to deal with higher-HP enemies, especially in groups, and even when using the Enhanced Ballistic item, changes the game from "Challenging" to "Meatgrinder". I know they're supposed to be rarer resources in this mod, but I have literally done missions where I have gotten scarcely a couple of fragments from about a dozen aliens, when most research projects require more than 20, and that's for the smaller ones. It may just be me, but I find that rather unreasonably rare of a reward rate.

The other point is the Arc Thrower, most notably in that it is nigh-useless in most situations now. At most, a 50% chance to stun means that not only do you have the difficulty of setting up your stun in the first place, but that when you try it it probably won't work, and you only get one shot at it. This would probably not be such an issue, thanks to the enhanced stun range, except that ALL of the Plasma weapon researches require captured weaponry, some of it from horrifyingly powerful enemies. I've lost more than a few troopers trying to capture even low-level aliens like Thin Men, because even those damned Carbines (Good rename btw) are quite powerful, especially after a couple of months. The base stun chance I can kind of understand, but I would suggest the Improved Arc Thrower project dramatically increase the stun chance, preferably at LEAST up to 75% or so for a 1HP enemy, because at the moment it is a waste of good research materials, providing a mere 3% increase in performance.

I really hate criticising, because this is one of the best mods I've ever had the pleasure to play, taking the core game and improving upon it in nearly every aspect. But these mechanics I feel warrant a bit of a look, if only because they occasionally change the game from "Challenging" to "Infuriating", and as I'm sure we can all agree, making the game enjoyable is the real goal. Well, that's my piece, hopefully it's some helpful feedback. Keep up the fantastic work on the mod, please!

[Amineri]

Johnnylump adjusted the arc thrower chances down to 50% max back in ... umm... version 1.05 I think? (would be 1.5 under the new naming system), back before I'd come up with a bunch of the AI bug fixes and tweaks that make it generally tougher to set up stun situations.

 

Back then it was pretty easy to use the overwatch + flank bug or the suppression + flank bug to force the last alien to skip its turn, which made capturing the last alien on every mission pretty simple. With the increased number of missions, the number of captured aliens could start to reach pretty ridiculuous dimensions.

 

However, now I've fixed the two already mentioned bugs, as well as putting in some special code for flanked, overwatched aliens that don't have any friends. If they don't have any shots left they they enter the "flee" state and so will move (even if suppressed), which makes pinning down that last alien to stun a lot harder.

 

I noticed while watching some of Gorda's playthroughs that he is having a tough time capturing aliens as well, which is good to a point ... it should be a bit tough to capture aliens. However, given some of the other changes JL might be open to raising the max stun chance a bit. The actual core stun chance is defined in native code so we can't actually chance it ... all we can do is put in a hack multiplier on the overall stun chance (which applies equally to regular or improved Arc Thrower).

[Zoraste]

Dammit, I figured that might be why it had such a terrible improvement rate with the Foundry project. Yeah, I agree that it should be reasonably tough, so we don't need like the 90% chance that the base game had for the Arc Thrower, but given the difficulty of both pinning down and weakening an alien to the point it can be captured, better than a coin flip odds of whether it works would be good. Especially since if you fail, then even if you have another Arc shot, the enemy tends to run even if you have them on overwatch or suppressed, resulting in their death and failure to capture.

[Zoraste]

Believe I found a bug. Any time I attempt to select Mexico to deploy a satellite over it, the game crashes to desktop. Reasonably certain it is mod related, since it never happened with base game. Not sure of cause. Sorry I can't be more help.

[johnnylump]

@ Zoraste

 

Thanks. We believe this is related to the new multiple alien base assault code (see the bug reports subforum on the mod page). Amineri has a fix mapped out; when I get it implemented I will launch v2.0 Beta 3.

[Zoraste]

Oh bugger, sorry about that. I didn't see there was such a bug report forum. Glad to hear a fix is on the way, though. I also really can't wait to see what you guys do for Enemy Within, given all the awesome new features you'll have to work with from the looks of it. Those Gene Mods alone look like something you guys can make several times more awesome.

[johnnylump]

Oh no worries! We set up a bunch of places for people to comment; can't blame them for using those places. :) Just wanted to make sure you saw those subforums where several other players are ringing in.

 

I haven't got Amineri's readout yet, but I'm initially not so sanguine we'll be able to quickly adapt all of Long War's features into the expansion. We really won't know until we get the expansion and start looking at the code. If it sits atop vanilla code, like the Slingshot DLC, it will be relatively easy. If it overwrites stuff we've already overwritten -- and the way the features are described, that may be likely -- it will be a lot of work, and we'll have to assess whether we can realistically take it on.

[Zoraste]

It does seem likely that it overwrites a fair bit, but I personally hope you guys are able to do it. I'm someone without a lot of spare cash to buy many games, so I use a lot of mods to expand the gameplay of ones I already have, and this is by far one of the best I have played. So I'm hopeful you guys can manage it. It's just a shame Firaxis hasn't taken you guy's cue and introduced those triple column skill trees, they work tons better for building my troops the way I want to.