Wormburgerfish

They can certainly shoot UP grav-lifts. I've lost several soldiers that way in base assaults (good ones too).

I guess there's probably no easy way to fix it on the PC so that mind-controlled X-Com soldiers aren't missing in action at the end either?

...but... I like avoiding Ethereals! This sounds like it is going to be hard.

Alright, I was a little busy but I have a save now that should suit your needs. It's a crashed terror ship with a skyranger in-root. Exactly how do I extract the savegame for you? Do I just copy all the files in "Game 1" into a zip and then send them to you?

Alright then, I'll play it some tonight and invite a base attack.

About that, I accidentally saved over that save. Would it help if I just shot down more "Celatid" ships and made a save or two before landing at those?

Alright, an update. The "mixed" Celatid missions are definitely bugged. I shot one down just now and the first two times I tried to land at the crash site the game crashed. It crashed again during the mission at one point. I then had a Celatid ship spot my base (little bastard just HAD to be the ONE retaliation UFO I didn't shoot down). The mothership came and managed to land... and the game crashed again when I tried to start the mission. I have a save just before the Celatid mission, another during, and another save just before the base assault. As for Psi, I haven't had the opportunity to field any psi soldiers just yet.

I have had crashes but I had those before I ever installed your mod. What exactly is a "crash save", you mean a save right before a crash? They don't happen consistently. It'll crash, I'll reload, and it will be fine. I played for several hours yesterday and didn't have any of those weird explosion bugs. Hmm. I don't know a lot about the inner workings of this game, not being a serious modder myself. Though with Cydonia the only 'mixing' that occurs is terror units. Personally, as I said, if you were to add mixed crews I would think that adding the odd Ethereal into missions would be the best way to do it. That way it is much harder to avoid them. In my current game I captured one that landed in a small scout and otherwise I've avoided fighting them until I have psionic-stable soldiers. However another thing to remember is the Hyper-Wave-Decoder. You don't want it to give away what the crew is. As it stands, the HWD is showing the Celatid/Silicoid crews as "Race... Celatid". It would keep me on my toes even more if I thought I was going to fight Mutons or Floaters or Snakemen and instead there was an Ethereal there harassing my troops. The psionic missions are always so tense. I might be wrong, but the type of map is linked to the terrain texture on the geoscape, is it not? Those are linked to real-world geography. Perhaps adding a few more mountain maps would be nice. Those seem to be the rarest. Perhaps add the Alps and the Rockies? That's only if you can mod the geoscape though. Otherwise it would look a bit sloppy, in my opinion. I think the maps are diverse enough as it is. Though if you were to change them I'd try to mix-up some of the pre-set tiles. You know like the lay-out of the farmhouse/sheds or buildings in urban terror maps. Though that might be a huge task for all I know. In either case I'm looking forward to the next patch. I have noticed the AI changes that are in there already. I've lost way more men to grenades than I ever did before. Night missions are a lot more dangerous too. I've watched them use some auto-fire as well.

Okay, another update. I think I've started encountering the mixed crews you talked about. I'm September now. The thing is, the mixed crews are celatids and silicoids. This doesn't really make sense since they're just animals and not sentient beings, and they are also relatively easy enemies. Were these aliens supposed to show up on their own like this? Otherwise things seem to be going well. Very well, actually. While I had to struggle quite a bit for the first four or five months, I've passed the last few with flying colors. I think that interception mod you talked about and the declining value of sold loot would be reasonable challenges to keep the late game more competitive. Same if you could get the odd ethereal to turn up on mixed crews. That would certainly make seemingly routine missions not so routine. I haven't had any other problems. Your mod is a lot of fun, I like it.

Are you asking which version of Xcom I have or which version of your patch? I downloaded the one at the top of the page. I assumed you edited the latest version into that? That could be the problem. Last night I noticed the silicoids were a bit inconsistent in whether or not they blew up. Some did, others didn't. I also had a terror mission with only 8 civvies. (I don't have psionics yet) About your other proposals: I don't know, UFO's running away a bit more might make more sense. Of-course you could wind up over-doing it. As it stands the game is already a lot harder and I find I just barely have enough time to research the things I need to stay proactive and keep my score in the positives consistently. I also feel the hyper-wave decoder is a nice reward for managing to snag a navigator. It's nice being able to free up so much space in your base by not having to stack radars. Like catching a sectoid leader in the early months. (though with that said I'm using the line of sight mod for Xcom psionics) Perhaps you could increase the maintenance cost of a hyper-wave decoder? If in the future you plan to make money a little harder to earn then the player will be hard-pressed to place decoders everywhere. Even if they do they might not have the money to build interceptors at all their listening posts and/or build and fuel enough Firestorms/Avengers to intercept every UFO they detect. Getting to the point where the player can detect and intercept every UFO on Earth takes a while as it is. Interceptors can only go so far and so fast. In my current game I've got a base in Taiwan, Ukraine, and Mexico. The Taiwan base however only just got partially operational and in the meantime the aliens have been running rampant all over southeast Asia because I just couldn't get my interceptors over there long enough before they ran out of fuel. I think I'm in June or July and I just haven't had enough time to research UFO construction on my own, instead having felt pressured to research power suits and other weapons-tech so that I could take on the larger UFO's and the bases without suffering too many causalities. That said, I'm not the best Xcom player out there either. Other people might have an easier time than I'm having. I'm just say that, it looks to me so far like you have already come pretty close to reaching the sweet spot for difficulty. It is challenging, but beatable if I play smart. It's keeping me on my toes. I used to just sit in my base for the first few months and only intercept what came into range. This game though I can't afford to have the aliens doing missions successfully in another part of the globe. Now I have to actually check my graphs and keep my interceptors and skyranger in the hotspots to try and catch the aliens in the act.

Not a bad idea, though to throw in my perspective on it the Terror Missions being a sort of defacto victory for the aliens makes sense. Xcom is supposed to make sure these kinds of incidents never happen in the first place. As for the data corruption, it happens on every kind of map. Though I haven't been paying close enough attention to give you specifics. I know it isn't just grenades in my inventory going off because when the guy blows up his body and loot is still there. I've seen these explosions happen right on my guys. There is another odd thing though; I've been losing guys to random explosions since last night. It's only happened twice but I'm positive it wasn't something I did. I had a guy walking down a corridor and then I heard the plasma shot sound and he blew up. There was an alien near-ish in the area (I was looking for the little bastard). I know aliens make that noise when they throw grenades. ...but it was just weird, whatever it was. Furthermore, about your future plans, I think an emphasis on Council funding is fair but only if the player has a fair chance to prevent the alien infiltration missions. That coupled with a loss of profit selling artifacts (as the market is flooded with them) would create just enough of challenge to prevent the player/Xcom from becoming complacent. Proactive, right to the end. It's your mod though, and I'm gonna play any future versions regardless. It's been... mmm... a little frustrating, but when I cool off I enjoy the challenge.

So can this be installed over the icing mod?

I've been play with your mod for a few days now and it is pretty awesome. Challenging! Fun though. To keep Xcom in the game I really have to take a much more proactive approach in the first few months than I ever did before. Terror missions are a nightmare and even when I slaughter the enemy I wind up with a negative score due to all the civvies that get butchered. Initially I was inclined to say that this was a little unfair, but by being diligent in my patrols I managed to avert two terror missions entirely. It's more realistic this way. The best way to save civilians is not to allow them to become trapped in a combat zone in the first place. I have noticed a few odd things, but I'm not certain if they are caused by your mod. For one, aliens seem to be panicking a bit more than usual. The other night I had four snakemen left in terror mission and they were all panicked. Also, sometimes when one of my troopers dies explosions seem to go off in other parts of the map. I didn't notice either of these things before and I'm not positive what is happening with the latter. Still, I have definitely noticed the A.I. changes. The little bastards are tricky with those grenades and they love to snipe now or to pop out around a corner and spray me with auto-fire. I'm curious, have you thought about examining the Alien Infiltration missions? Perhaps making it so the player can reliably stop them, but also enabling the aliens to win the game by infiltrating all the founding nations? Or something to that effect maybe? I haven't got the chance to try it out yet, but I love that alien retaliation missions should now end if the battleship is destroyed. Defenses are actually worth the expense and space now.

Are these the same AI changes in the "Icing" mod? So if I have the icing mod there is no point in downloading this one?

So I found a civilian in a crash recovery mission last night. That's not supposed to happen, right? It was a crashed terror ship, so maybe it was a glitch? At first I thought it was just a freaky sound glitch because I heard a civilian die in the second or third turn. I never found a body because these days rather than clearing buildings I tend to just level them with alien grenades. Much safer. However, sure enough, in the mission complete screen was "Civilians killed by aliens.... 1"