XCOM EU SHIVs, Extra Conditioning and Rift, help requested.

[Nyito]

So messing around with the resource hacker, edited a lot of things, but I can't figure out a few things, so requesting a little help.

 

I can't find the various SHIV variants. I'm hoping to rebalance the SHIVs to make the Alloy one less mobile, but tankier, give the standard SHIV bonus accuracy and damage, and make the Hover SHIV more mobile, higher defense, but much less HP. I'd also like to make it so there's a 7th squad slot I can dedicate to SHIVs, but I suspect that's a much, much bigger task than can be currently attempted at my meager knowledge of modding.

 

Extra Conditioning perk; from what I can tell, it's divided up amongst 4 armor 'tiers', and gives bonus HP accordingly. I'm hoping to bring Titan and Archangel armor down to the same tier as Ghost and Psi armor, but I can't find where these values are stored; either on the armor, or the ability.

 

I see that the Psi levels are stored as such that the Volunteer effectively requires 1M xp to attain, assuming there's a hook somewhere that awards said XP for the final mission; is it safe to edit this down to an actually attainable level that allows for regular soldiers to pick the ability up? I sense there's going to be some conflicts elsewhere that break the game at some point.

 

On a related note, is it possible to replace the (relatively) useless Psi Panic with the Psi Bolt attack Etherals have? I figure that would be the easiest way to give a more useful third offensive Psi option.

 

I hear tell on the wiki and elsewhere that a few items are bugged; specifically Combat Drugs perked Smoke Grenades actually lose the +20 defense it should retain? Similarly, the Light Plasma Rifle doesn't give the advertised +10 Aim? If so, how can I fix this?

 

Lastly and most ambitiously, is there a way to allow for Abduction-style missions to continue even after full sat coverage? Ideally with much more limited panic implications, since it would be impossible to respond to all of them; or alternately, allow them to spawn much like Council missions, but more varied. Late game, I get pretty bored of the same UFO maps all the time, and miss the city maps; and the few Council missions that still use them use static spawns and almost nothing but Thin men; I'd like to see more vareity in such missions, ranging from Sectoids to Elite Mutons and up.

 

Related, I'd like to modify spawn behaviours so that Sectoids, Floaters and Outsiders continue to spawn in the late game with decent frequency; ideally simply increasing the enemy count per map, rather than just replacing existing spawns.

 

Answers are much appreciated!

 

 

[anUser]

that's a lot of different questions, and most of this has already been done, you could use a visit to the Mod Talk forum.

 

Anyway, shiv stats are defined in the DGC.ini file, they appear among the armor entries, that's how the game treats it. Also Amineri has made some interesting mods to improve shivs, you may want to take a look at them here and here and maybe somewhere else.

 

...extra condition perk, no idea...

 

altering perks in trees... totally possible.. it's still to test if the psi lance ability is playable and it doesn't require any special item to use it, you may want to take a look at this thread with some improvements editting perk trees here

 

It's actually possible to make abductions happen in countries with satellites, here's a list of hex edits to play with ufos and interceptor combat. Notice some code may be out of date as it was published before last patch. You can even randomize the number of locations each abduction takes place in, and increase the number of abductions to whatever you'd want

 

There's a mod that make aliens update their stats with time here. There it's explained how to make weaker aliens appear more often late in the game.

 

Playing with more than 6 soldiers... I know there's ppl toying with the possibility, and it's been done but there were some problems placing units in the map, I'm not sure if it's been solved.

 

Good luck