Alpha Strike mod

[eemm]

Hi! I have been tinkering with the SightRadius property. Several people have reported that raising it above 27 could be buggy, what I did is I lowered it for the aliens instead, and that small change can make the game play very differently. :smile:

 

So, I've released the Alpha Strike mod, which changes all aliens' SightRadius from 27 to 18, so that you can aproach them without being automatically noticed. You may want to give it a try:

 

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/102/?

 

The three images I posted there show what you can do.

 

1. Exploring around I find three sectoids inside a house. They are not aware of me, as I haven't entered their 18 square SightRadius. I take my time to surround the house finding good firing positions for my four men.

 

2. I set three of them to Overwatch, and I open fire with the other one. My shot kills one sectoid. Now the cutscene comes, showing the two remaining ones, a bit more surprised than usual as the first one lays dead on their feet. :smile:

 

3. As the sectoids try to reach for cover my other three soldiers open reaction fire against them. An Alpha Strike well performed!

 

Have fun!

 

 

[Yzaxtol]

Cool, a simple and awesome concept.

 

However easier mods tend not to be well received as the majority of the people that are still playing XCOM and looking for Mods now most likely have played it alot, probably even completed it on Impossible.

[anUser]

Hey, welcome to the forum, and thanks for sharing your ideas. I can see how this change has a big impact on gameplay, I'm sure it must be pretty cool when you can perform a perfectly executed ambush and kill all the aliens in a strike without them even taking notice of your presence, but as Yzaxtol pointed out most modders seek for a more challenging experience, and this mod kind of make things (much) easier (although what modders want may not be what players want). Maybe this "mod" combined with increased alien aim and damage can be a fair challenge, either put out the ambush perfectly or pay the slightest mistake... Anyway I'd like to hear from people playing the several options what are their impressions as for playability... this limited xcom visual range reminded me of something someone said in this forum about an earlier version of the game having night-time missions where soldiers had a lower visual range than usual... does it play well? btw, it's appreciated that you'd packed it in a ready-to-go file, but that is a really simple edit you could teach people how to do it themselves as well, since there are many other aspects of the game that can be changed editting the DGC.ini file besides visual range.

[eemm]

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Certainly this mod makes the combat easier but, after playing Classic Ironman both vanilla and modded I wouldn't say it's much easier or too easy. It's not a matter of spot, alpha strike, rinse and repeat. Sometimes you'll bump into a group of aliens, or they will on their turn when patrolling around. When you manage to set up your ambush, you don't always have the luck/firepower to bring all the aliens down. So combat is still exciting and you do lose men sometimes.

 

When you play the vanilla game in the higher difficulties you fight big groups of aliens under cover, and often the only way of not dying is hunkering/retreating to a safe spot and overwatch until the bad AI makes a mistake. What the mod does is allow you to fight in your own terms, spreading your men, exploring and setting up flanks without fear of triggering more aliens, and using tactics like divide&conquer or hit&run.

 

I guess that those of you who have beaten the game in Impossible Ironman with Second Wave and Slingshot will have to look elsewhere for a challenge, but for most people I think it will be OK. I like getting raped in the first mission in Impossible with the mod on, there are just too many aliens everywhere. :) I do ocasionally win without loses, but it is a challenge for me.

 

Basically I suggest just trying the mod. It will be fun. :)

 

By the way, I did include an option in my .zip called MidnightStrike, in which your soldiers are the ones getting SightRadius down to 18. :) I suppose playing with it and no SquadSight snipers could be quite interesting for anyone. :)

[Yzaxtol]

I've already messed around with sight ranges in my mod Merciless. Currently each alien has a sight-range unique to that species. Humans have 22, SHIVs have 27 sectoids 24, mutons 18, Drones have 27 etc etc Sometimes you'll ambush the Mutons, sometimes you might get seen by the Sectopod's Drones but not the Sectopod itself. So taking out the drones will stop the sectopod from killing you or sending it's missiles :D

 

Hopefully once I've learned how to grant squad-sight to certain aliens, I'll be able to create more tactical options for the player :D

[eemm]

I'm trying Merciless now, so far so good! Keep up the good work! :)