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My custom Xcom


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After playing through all possible (and impossible) custom Xcom scenarios I kind of gave up on Xcom EU, just as I had given up on TFTD a long time ago. Xcom EU was far too easy, no matter what I changed in my gaming style, TFTD was boring for me (those endless missions, sigh) and I did not like the odd graphical look of the underwater alien bases and the terrain layout was too weird for me.

 

Then one day I downloaded the Xcom CE, found Seb76's loader and discovered the incredible tools in the files section here. I want to mention hatfarm's mod tools especially, which seems to have the most understating file description ever, they are pure editing gold. As are the map-editing tools like Mapview (which is a map-editor actually) etc., PCK-View, BombBlokes, tools etc etc.

They all have rather boring and meaningless descriptions here on the site, whereas they are actually essential and invaluable! Maybe this should be improved and changed?

 

Seb76's loader basically reinvented Xcom EU for me, finally things were possible that weren't before, especially the weapon/range/penalty feature triggered my interest.

 

So I made me my own custom Xcom.

 

I used the CE version of Xcom EU as a base.

First I applied all the route/rmp/MCD fixes found in the file section here.

Then I remade most maps, made them look more interesting to me. I also gave the transporters a small overhaul. e.g. I gave the Skyranger a different look, or added a safety "pod" to the Avenger and Lightning. I explained that in the according ufopedia entries.

Then I applied several features of the Ufo Extender, like the range penalty, mp3 music, stackable grenade explosions and so on.

After that I went on to balance the game:

 

-Most Alien stats are increased, more TU, much more health, strength more armor, more PSI resistable. I did not change their PSI skills though, this simply made the game unplayable as even the tiniest increase here makes them take over all your soldiers no matter their psi strength! The accuracy was left unchanged as well. I also gave the Silacoid and Gelatid a flying ability.

-Then I increased the already implemented weaknesses/strengths of the enemies, e.g. if an alien was weak against Plasma before, it was even worse later, if it was good against Laser before it was even better later.

-Then I changed the whole weapon concept, I made it so that no weapon becomes obsolete and the pistols are as valuable as the rifles or heavys etc. I made this by editing the resistances of the different enemies and adjusting damage values of the weapons themselves.

-All (shooting) weapons do similar damage, AP is a bit weaker, but more accurate, laser weapons are heavy, weak and inaccurate but hey, they have unlimited ammo. To make things ineresting Plasma weapons are odd now, e.g. I made a Plasma sniper which does double the damage but fires half the shots, there is a truly heavy Plasma rifle now that does good damge , but the ranged accuracy is limited etc. etc.

-The most important weapon change was the removal of redundancy: Now one weapon has one ammo only and one firemode only! This helped a lot to give each weapon a specific purpose and led to wonderful new tactics. More about this later. I also made the clip-size generally smaller to make ammo more of a tactical concern. This also had the side-effect of alines using more grenades, yay!

-I also changed the weight of different weapons and pieces of equipment. So I made e.g. the alien grenade weigh 9 and the HE(200 damage) 12, the medi-kit 20, made the weapons heavier etc etc. This equalized the weapons which is a good thing imo: The light normal grenade now is used for long ranged throws, the HE is too heavy for that etc. No weapon becomes useless anymore.

-PSI: Along with the extremely heavy PSI Controller (which reduces TU's that way) and the increased alien PSI strength this was further dramatically reduced by enabling the Line-of-view requirement in the UFO Extender. This was one game-breaking feature for me before, as basically everything else became useless once you had PSI in the original game. Now there are one or two PSI specialists which will do as much damage as other soldiers overall.

-Blaster Launchers: Just like the old PSI this was a game-breaking weapon imo, once you had them you wouldn't need anything else. So I gave them a big penalty, they are MUCH weaker now: I decreased the damage to 60! And that of the Hover launcher tank to 70! It still is very useful as a weapon to finish weakened threats, but no longer it is the ultimate weapon.

-Tanks: I made the hover tanks VERY fragile, they have flying ability so what? I also balanced the tank damages out, each of them has a special role now, there is the quick-fire cannon tank and the heavy damage but slowfiring laser-tank etc.

-Armor: Maybe one of the most important changes: The personal armor has the strongest frontal protection but is weak everywhere else, the power armour gives all-around protection, is unharmed by INC (this made it an anvironment suit for specially armed troops) but is not so strong at the front as the personal armor. The flying suit is the weakest of all. You can fly with it, that's more than a compensation imo.

-Incendiaries: Each weapon has one ammo now and the HC became a (200 damage) napalm cannon now. The "Funky fire" feature of the UFO Extender finally made those weapons useful and truly something to fear. By aliens and by your troops if they do not wear the right armour! The NC now serves a very unique purpose: It is used to engulf large areas in flames, damaging a lot of things over a long time. You will score a lot of "passive" kills that way by roasting unconscious aliens, lol. And it weakens most aliens for the other soldiers. Still, some aliens are unharmed by fire, so go figure.

-Weapons do have 1 fire mode now only. Now there are snipers, scouts, guards and "breachers", your soldiers become specialists that way. E.g. A soldier with low reaction but good strength takes the machine gun, a soldier with high accuracy the rifle, a light-weight and quick dude becomes the guard with a snap-fire weapon. It also led to more tactics, you will base them after observing an aliens loadout.: It has a snap-fire weapon, so you will try to avoid the reaction fire during your turn, it has a aimed/burst wepon so you will keep away from it at the end of the turn etc.

-I also made all base defences useful, later ones do have the advantage of taking up less space only. (1 fusion defense instead of 5 missile defenses).

-Base facilities are MUCH more expensive now. The base also starts without a workshop and a lab. Scientists and Engineers are much more expensive, too. MUCH more. This leads to a slower gameplay which is a good thing imo. No longer you will be in Cydonia after the first month :-P

-Everything is more expensive and you will get a lot less money when selling things. No longer can you depend on the income of selling recovered Heavy Plasmas only. You will have to plan, to postpone certain things, you will have to really earn your money the hard way and you will have to take more care when shooting at things, you might destroy them and get even less money. A tank now is truly expensive, as is an Interceptor, you will no longer be able to stock unlimited craft ammo as you will not have the money for it. A succesful mission in an alien base now gives you ~900.000 income. Enough for buying one scientist and enough ammo for a quarter of the month. If the month is very quiet.

-Cosmetical changes: I renamed all weapons. There now is a machine gun (the old AC with burst-fire only), a napalm cannon, a plasma rapid (the plasma pistol with burst-fire only), a plasma sniper (the old rifle with aim-fire only, one shot per round doing more damage though), the snap-firing Plasma Thrower etc etc. I also changed the Ufopedia descriptions. That is for the english version. I also use Bagirov's uniforms mod.

 

I am happy. Xcom now is the game that I ever wanted. It was awesome before, but now it is close to be perfect. There are some observations I made:

 

-Do not use any game exploits, they ruin the game. E.g. Do not wait until it is day on terror mission, do them as soon as possible, the civilians depend on you! Increasing the difficultly now makes formerly unused things essential: The mindprobe now helps you to decide if you will attack that alien in that round or if it is worth wasting a shot at it with a not-so-good weapon. The motion scanner now is extremely useful, e.g. when disembarking in night or to "see" how many aliens are left in that scout.

Smoke grenades are essential now, too. No longer can you ignore any threats because of your armor. Do not milk those bases and ufos. Play fair, you will benefit from it. Do not reload every move, accept it when things do not work. Retreat and abandon a mission, things like that. Don't cheat.

 

-Some changes (the tank stats) are not properly displayed in the Ufopedia, it seems the game does not look at the EXE stats when displaying those. The stats work in the battle, though.

 

-Psi and Blaster Launchers are game-breaking weapons in the original game. They make everything else useless. Also: Incendiaries are rather useless in the original game. Now that they do damge they are invaluable.

 

-Removing the redundant fire-modes and ammo really helped the feeling of the game tremendously. That with the range/penalty of the Ufo Extender makes the game much more interesting. You will have truly unique soldiers, e.g. the Guy in the flame-proof armor with the Napalm cannon clearing areas, the flying suit sniper, the machingunner with the heavy frontal armor protection opening UFO doors and and and.

 

-Being able to open doors by right clicking is nice :-D

 

-Using a scissor/rock/paper balance for weapons and aliens also made the game more interesting. Good luck when you forgot e.g. the grenades when facing Mutons or Laser weapons when facing sectopods. The original game had a good idea there, but it did not implement it strong enough. That and no longer weapons become obsolete. And it will lead to awesome situations during missions.

 

-If you change weapons fire modes, make sure that the Heavy Plasma always has a snap-fire mode, otherwise aliens become defensless as they only reaction-fire in snap mode. The HP is THE main weapon of them, so make sure it is useful and usable for them.

 

-Editing the PCK files is tricky, it is easy to mess the graphic files up. I made some minor changes and they showed up in the game correctly but they corrupted the Ufopedia presentation etc etc. Replacing graphics with existing ones works, though. I think it has to do with the color palette...

 

-Editing the number of aliens per mission is not really important, better focus on their stats and characteristics.

 

--Ok that's all, folks!

 

A big thank you to all of you editing/mod/programmer guys, it is incredible what you do/acchieved with this game! BombBloke, Hatfarm, Seb76, Bagirov, etc etc you are awesome! I love Xcom again.

 

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With all the reverse engineering done, there's quite a lot that can indeed be done. But on that same note, there is also a lot of aspects in the game that cannot be edited either. Still, the quality editors and tools that have popped up over the last couple years or are leaps and bounds ahead of the stuff we had prior to that.

 

I don't really have much to say about the alterations except that it is definitely a matter of 'to each their own'. I think one of the important things is the variety - it doesn't have to remain the same, and it's good to try new things in different ways to keep the interest up. More importantly is to have fun with it.

 

- NKF

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I'm really the last guy with the right to judge how other people have fun, so long as it doesn't violate any major local ordinances, but I'm not sure this'll live up to your hopes of returning X-Com to long lost joys. Sometimes you just burn out on a game for a bit. Might work better to just give it a rest for a while until you forget enough to start sucking again.

 

(Of course, that's just personal experience. Good chance I'm wrong.)

 

As for the specifics?

 

Well, if you don't want any criticism, be glad to take it all down in a heartbeat, but I have a couple things about the changes that don't sit quite right.

 

General trends rather than specifics. Goes quicker.

 

1) You changed a LOT of numbers around. From most examples I've seen, that kind of thing needs massive testing to see how and where balance breaks down. Just a simple example? Flying Celatids would have less range due to level ceilings. Might actually make them less effective. Lot of trickledown and previously unnoticable glitches to watch for.

 

2) The removal of advancement. One of the fun things about X-Com is getting better. Better guns, better armor, slowly going from doomed to the deadliest army on the planet. Here, that isn't happening. If beginning guns are as good as endgame tech, research feels like thumb twiddling and filling time until Cydonia.

 

3) The whole thing feels like it's built to remove choices once a mission starts. No alternate firing modes and increased weights mean every trooper get one loadout that does one thing and he doess that thing until he dies. Less improvising, more following The One True Path or seeing the Game Over screen.

 

Well, that's enough to start, I suppose. Once again, if it touched a nerve best left untouched, I can pull it all down and sorry to have offended.

 

But I do feel there's enough bad ideas going around to obscure the good ones entirely.

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That's a... helluwa lot of text. Interesting, at that. I had no idea one can do all that, seriously.

 

Though making tanks fragile seems a bit too much.

 

So. How much do you play X-COM now?

 

About 12 hours a day for the last 8 weeks or so :)

 

chiasaur11

 

Thanks for the Celatid tip! About the changes: trust me, I am no Xcom newbie, i played this game since it was released on the Playstation 1 and i modded it a lot for a long time so those changes are very specific and balanced. That said. I am constantly tweaking and correcting things once I see them unfit. However my new campaign slowly comes to an end and it seems the game is now 100% tailor made for me. :(

 

About the advancement: I made it so that one needs all weapon, there is no jack-of-all-trades, even the 200 damage HE pack has enemies that are not too impressed by it. The new researched weapons im my mod make it more complete instead of making other weapons obsolete. This might not be everybody's cup of tea, but well, i like it that way, go make your own mod :( j/k

 

Choice removal? hell, no! Now you finally have to decide something and the game is much more demanding thought-wise and tactically. My goal was to remove redundancy and I feel quite content now with my mod. You are right about one thing: The troops are developing slower and in only way, which makles them specialists and actually have a character. That's a big plus imo. I want "real" and unique soldiers and not anonymous john doe's :(

 

Space Voyager, yes the hover tanks were too fragile and I adjusted them. They are still less armored than the ground-only tanks. Thant and I changed the Blaster Launcher back to 70 damage, 60 was a bit too weak.

 

One thing really bugs me, though: The graphics in Xcom are really difficult to mod, It seems if I change one pixel in e.g. bigobject.pck the whole file gets corrupted, no matter what tool i use, even when especially taking care of using the correct color pallette. :) Any ideas or tips for that?

 

Anyway, thanks for the input, guys! I appreciate it a lot.

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You have to remember that X-Com EU was originally written for DOS. So, you are looking at possibly 15+ years since it's been out, and playing. So, trying to change the game is going to be a little harder than you may run into with other games.

 

As to changes, well, I doubt I'll try it. I don't have time right now to do much with games. But it looks like you are trying too much too soon, too fast. And it seems like there wouldn't be much point in manufacturing anything but laser rifles and power armor. The Power armor should be more resistant to things, not less, than personal armor. I think of personal armor as a suit of armor that has kevlar and metal in it. The power armor, though, is all alien metal with servo-motors moving it. Flying armor should be as strong as power armor, and perhaps even a little more so in a couple minor areas. I think of the personal armor as akin to what SWAT wears, or the U.S. military does when it's deployed and on the ground. Maybe closer to Imperial Stormtrooper, with an open helmet type armor. Or Kull Warrior armor from Stargate SG-1. Power armor would be like the first Ironman suit. The Flying armor is that suit with an anti-gravity unit attached to it.

 

I have more, but that's whats on the top of my head.

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BigObs uses 32x48 sprites, compared to the usual 32x40. The only tool I know of that can correctly write that particular archive is my own GIF-to-PCK converter.

 

Will try that, thank you!

 

Sgt_Strike, I completed my conversion already and it works exactly how i want it. I do not want the power armor to be the only thing to have, so I gave it a stun/inc protection that the personal armor doesn't has and gave it a medium protection on all sides wheras the personal armor is stronger at the front but weaker at the sides and the back. Also, I made the weapons do similar damge so why would laser rifles be the only thing to build? I also changed the weaknesses/strength of the aliens so that laser/lasma/AP do all have certain aliens suffering from them and others receiving little damage.

 

Anyway, I fixed some tiny bugs in my maps and now I have started a new campaign after I completing my test/development campaign. I am happy and content. :(

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  • 2 months later...
So I made me my own custom Xcom.

 

<snip>

 

I am happy. Xcom now is the game that I ever wanted. It was awesome before, but now it is close to be perfect.

 

<snip>

 

A big thank you to all of you editing/mod/programmer guys, it is incredible what you do/acchieved with this game! BombBloke, Hatfarm, Seb76, Bagirov, etc etc you are awesome! I love Xcom again.

I haven't been here in a few years, but started to get a little XCOM itch a few days ago...and reading your post reminded me of my own customized game. :)

 

Thanks to your ideas, I've made a few tweaks, and I'm now playing again (only January 6th; a long way to go...). Nice to be back in the command chair, though. I've also been reading through the Wiki and some of the old posts--surprising how much has been discovered in the past five years!

 

My first mission, shot down a small UFO then went in with my 8 starters. Lost 5 exiting the Skyranger, 1 went berserk, the remaining two called "Abort!" and took off. Have a new contingent of soldiers now; hopefully these recruits will have a bit more combat prowess...

 

Time to go shoot some sectoids! :P

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  • 1 month later...

Civilian here. I had to re-register as I lost my password and no longer have my old email.

 

 

Anyway, after months of playtesting and tweaking I uploaded the Total Conversion to strategycore, hopefully you will be able to download it directly from here soon. In the meantime you can download it here: https://www.megaupload.com/?d=R3XWLWKA

 

The readme:

 

This is a total conversion (as it surpasses the definition of a mere mod) for the DOS version of Xcom. It will make the game more challenging, be warned. No joking here, now you can lose your campaign if you are careless or have a bad day/month. However, you will have a lot of fun doing so. And if you win now, you REALLY have acchieved something. And will look forward to start a new game.

 

It started as a personal fix of some things that annoyed me in Xcom (The Uber-Blaster, the Uber-Psi, the Uber-Armors, etc.) but then developed into a major overhaul and soon into a complete conversion.

 

Installation: Make a copy of your default, patched and unmodded Dos Xcom folder. Delete all savegames if you have any. Drop the files form this zip in it and let them overwrite everything. Done. Start a new game. Be surprised. Have fun! :-P

 

Important:

This is NOT compatible with XcomUtil as the later overwrites all possible changes i made, but otoh you will imo not need that anymore as the game is balanced completely different now.

 

Changes from original Xcom:

 

-applied all community fixes and patches found on strategycore.

-applied the difficulty bug fix.

-edited many maps (different look, different layout, UFOs all have a exit lift etc, removed the annoying labyrinth from the Alien bases etc. etc etc)

-edited landing crafts for better troop safety, tried to stay reasonable and within the original theme

-edited costs and base defenses. e.g. You can now defend your base with the early defenses BUT they will take away valuable space, so the later researches are still useful. The small radar is cheaper and builds WAY faster than the big one now. etc.

-edited starting base layout. You will have NO scientists, no lab, no engineers, no working rooms. You will actualy have to build and buy those! (gasp)

-Most things are expensive now. And you will get a lot less money for sold things.

-Edited UFOs and interceptor/transporter stats. Everything has a specific role now.

 

Completely overhauled the weapons/armors/aliens/equipment and tanks

 

-Aliens are stronger now and have slightly different abilities and weaknesses. The Gelatid finally shots at you, the silacoids can fly. Basically, do not expect to take down a Reaper with a single shot of the pistol anymore. ;-)

-All weapons only have one shooting mode now to make them more specific, this will make your soldiers specialists on a long term

-reworked the whole damage and weaknesses system to make ALL weapons useful even late-game. Specific aliens have specific weaknesses, research them!

-removed redundant ammo

-made weapons and equipment heavier, you will now have to decide who carries what and why (e.g. should i carry 2 light grenades or one heavy with a bigger boom?)

-edited tank stats and weapons

-edited Ufopedia entrys, they contain all the important changes, READ THEM!

-Corpses research is now VERY useful as you will gain important knowledge about Alien weaknesses, READ THE UFOPEDIA ENTRYS!!!!

-PSi is now MUCH less useful, the PSI-Amp is VERY heavy.

-Raised the difficulty. A lot. It is actually possible to lose the game now. (gasp!)

 

 

Details and tips in no particular order:

 

-Now it is finally useful and important to take a look what the enemy carries, e.g. sniper rifles do not have a reaction-fire mode

-First Aid kits are heavy, you will most likely have only 1 or 2 docs in a team with only light weaponry

-The early tanks are stronger now, but much more expensive. Their ammo, too. Later tanks are more precise and strong weaponry, but are VERY fragile. They can fly which imo is a huge benefit that needed a balance somehow.

-Stuff will cost more and will sell for less. You will have to plan carefully which weapon you use, both in tactical and geo mode.

-The Blast Launcher is MUCH weaker now. It is guided and needed a balance imo. It is still useful, don't worry :-)

-Stuff like the motion scanner and the mind probes are now essential, the enemy is stronger, you will need to know where to hit and with what.

-The Napalm cannon is extremely strong, but also inaccurate and dangerous to civilians and your troops. Be careful. It is a VERY useful weapon, though. Obviously NOT in close combat situations. And yes, You will be able to kill with that weapon now :-)

-The HE is able to breach UFO hulls. It is VERY heavy, though, plan your moves carefully.

-The aliens have slightly diffrent weaknesses now. Again: Research them and their corpses, read the UFOpedia entries, they are finally useful, even essential.

-Psi amps: You will most likely have only 1 or 2 PSI specialists now as the PSI-AMP is extremely heavy and prevents you from carrying mostly anything else. Develop tactics to deploy them (e.g. drop them before you end the turn etc.), They are now ONE weapon and not THE weapon. And yes, they are THAT heavy, that's not a bug.

-Armor now works completely different. The personal armor provides VERY good frontal protection, the power armor provides medium all-around protection AND safety from stun and acid weapons, the flying suit can fly but is the weakest now to balance things out. This will lead to actually have to make decisions (gasp!) :-D

-Your team will be a team of specialists. The power-armored napalm-cannon flamer guy, the

flying sniper, the doc, the frontal armored machine gun dudes. No longer will all soldiers be jack-of-all-trades

super soldiers in unbreachable flying power suits armed with PSIs and maybe one Blaster Launcher.

Make decisions. This applies to the whole game now. You will have to think about what you are doing.

-Take a look at the armor stats of aliens with the mind probe. Look for weak spots. (hint for ethereals, cough)

 

Starting tips:

-You will lose soldiers, bases, maybe even the game. Especially at the start as you will most likely use old (default Xcom) tactics and strategies.

To avoid this play the game more "realistic". Plan carefully, withdraw from the battlefield, abort missions. Use your common sense and develop new moves. Take a look at prices, stats, weights and (again) ufopedia entries.

 

The main goal of this conversion was to make the game more demanding, tactically deeper, more balanced, more interesting, less annoying and new. I spent months to test and balance this baby almost daily and I think it works and I can release it now.

 

Once again: Read the Ufopedia entries, take look at stats, use those mind probes.

This is not your old Xcom anymore, some things do work different now. Some vary only a bit, some are COMPLETLY different.

 

Ok, good luck and have fun.

 

Minor known issues:

- The Skyranger has two BLANK missiles for the tac rocket launcher aboard. I could not find a way to remove them. Simply sell them. They do no damage anyway.

-The german and french texts are unaltered. Play the game in english, please.

 

I have not tested this conversion with any other mods, except the ComCiv mod (which works nicely and is very funny).

 

kthxbye

 

Xcom forever!

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Whoa, awesome! Before I read this thread, some months ago I made similar changes to many things, for TFTD. I wanted there to be less of linear rush in the game and mostly different choices when you get new technology. I thought armors, weapons, item weights, fire modes really needed changing to prevent the usual late game everyone-has-heavy-plasma-and-flying-armor problem. I made similar changes to armors as you did.

 

I was using nearly all catwalk's changes too as a base. I didn't think of changing maps and lots of other things that you did. I'm going to check this out immediately! Thanks!

 

If you could suggest difficulty differences between the difficulty levels compared to regular x-com, what would they be named?

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I'm fairly sure that my game, modded with this mod, is working normally with a few minimal changes from Xcomutil build 442. I'm writing what I did below, I think nearly any other change than the two I used from Xcomutil probably wouldn't work or would conflict with this mod.

 

1. Backed up Xcom folder

2. Copied this mod's files into the xcom folder (overwrite)

3. Put xcomutil in the xcom fodler.

4. Deleted all Collector's Edition executables and patch.dll so that Xcomutil recognizes DOS Xcom version 1.4

5. Ran xcusetup in dosbox

6. only used options to randomize terrain in world.dat (not any generator option) ...

7. ...and to install sound effects from 1.0 into 1.4 Xcom.

8. copied files from this mod again into the xcom folder Except for : ...

9. ... world.dat in /GEODATA and anything in /SOUND

10. Run the game with xcom.bat instead of runxcom (run the game without xcomutil)

11. Careful not to run xcomutil again by accident.

 

I'm playing on experienced. I had some fun floater crash sites and a floater terror mission.

I used the napalm gun there and some reapers were kind of tamed by it. I do find grenades more useful now and more necessary. The new weapons are just what I was hoping for. The floaters are getting better about their psionic attacks. It's only enough to control my weakest soldiers though, occasionally. It's a good balance I think. I haven't got any research done yet, and I like the changes there so far.

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  • 1 month later...

wow! thx civilian, i was just about to ask you to upload those awesome changes u made :laugh:

I think ill try to adapt them to xcom TftD if you dont mind.

I guess you dont have a txt file with all the changes (with actual values of dmg etc) so i will dig into hex editing your EXEs.

 

Thx a lot for that it will keep me playing xcom for thousands of more hours ^^

 

greez

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  • 2 years later...

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