First time playthrough - recommended mods?

[mothrpe]

Hey guys,

 

I'm playing through xcom for the first time, I've already loaded a couple graphics mods, but I'm curious if you guys would recommend any of the mods like warspace extension for a superior experience?

[anUser]

I'd really recommend playing vanilla XCom for the first playthrough, so you can know what the game is like and what things have been/can be changed by mods. Moreover both big mods (warspace and long war) make the game a little bit more difficult, so you may want to try it unmodded first.

 

Honestly I'm not even aware of the mods that there are out, I got used to make small edits to the upk files myself (in hex), and I'm building my own game gradually. If you're interested in modding your game yourself you'll find a lot of threads in this forum discussing specific changes to the game, and some of them provide the code to be installed using Toolboks, so you can just try em out, and if you don't like them just revert the changes easily. Moreover, mod choices depends on personal taste and what you want to achieve with those mods, there are edits that clearly make the game more difficult, while others redefine certain aspect of the game (usualy in order to make it more difficult, too), so that's why I recommend playing vanilla game first, so you can know the flaws of the game and how mods address them.

 

Now if you'd ask me the few most relevant edits in terms of game impact and appeal, I'd say those are: custom perk trees, military retexture, abductions re-work (random [increased] number of abductions per month and random abduction spots, including "in-radar" countries), weapons range re-work (effectively limited range and long range aim penalty for rifles, includin aliens' weapons), explosives random radius and damage, and once I implement it I expect alien dynamic stats to be a of a major impact. Also making the small radar facility allows only 1 satellite has a major impact on strategic game.

[Amineri]

I'd also recommend Vanilla for the first time through. Just keep in mind that the game "cheats on the players behalf" on both Easy and Normal.

 

Things like:

1) Increasing player chances to hit (above what is displayed) if you miss multiple shots

2) Decreasing alien chances to hit if they hit multiple times

3) Preventing more than five aliens from engaging at a time

4) Preventing one-shot kills by aliens in certain circumstances

5) Limiting the AI choices to less-optimal choices

 

If you get used to these, playing Classic/Impossible difficulty may feel like the AI is cheating -- it isn't -- it actually stops cheating for the player.

 

Once you beat the game, there are some Second Wave options available.

 

Other little mods that can be interesting/useful for first-time players:

1) Randomized explosive damage

2) Fix bug that prevents equipment loss if entire squad is lost

3) Fix bug that prevents interceptor weapon loss if interceptor is shot down

[Yzaxtol]

Fix Bug that prevents equipment loss when the equipment is lost? Sounds more like a cheat to me :P

EDIT: reading a different post is obvious you mean the opposite, silly me :S

Also Merciless was forgotten :(

Edited April 19, 2013 by Yzaxtol