Civilian

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.

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.

This sounds great! Do you have any documentation (hex-offsets e.g.) of the changes?

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.

Thanks to you guys! You all made very good points and now i feel relaxed, I no longer feel "odd". And ok Thorondor, I'll try to not lose ALL interests. I doubt that this (loss of all interests) actually is what my development in the moment is about. It is more a shift to a personal and direct life instead of a remote-controlled and anonymous one. Becoming more mature? Yes, that could also be true. I am way less aggressive, more reasonable and I actually follow my own advice, I listen to the truths I discovered on my own and never used before... This makes life and all things so much easier... No wonder my life finally starts to function and to take off. Thanks again and have a nice weekend everybody!

I deleted my post as I thought my success story in it might sound a bit mocking. I wasn't sure if it could be misunderstood.... I can sum it up for you, though: Didn't have any plan, went dancing, looked in one direction, saw someone and we both were hit by an lightning of love in that very moment. Then I concluded with the insight that all the planning is only an illusion, everything happens automatically, all you can do is to produce possibilities and opportunities.

I am a bit confused about a certain development in my life: Some years ago it all started when my TV broke and I didn't bother to replace it. I simply threw the old one away and never bought a new one. At the beginning I missed the news a bit and some times the late night movies, but the fact that I was no longer constantly bombarded by commercials easily made up for this point. When I absolutely wanted to watch a movie i watched a DVD or browsed the Internet. Then suddenly I no longer read newspapers. The news did no longer bother me, I mean if an earthquake happened in XY and a plane crashed in YX, what does it matter to me, here? it already has happened, I can't change a thing about it, why burden me with those deaths? I still kept updated on local news, though. Then even the local news didn't interest me anymore. I browsed the Internet, played games, had friends and fun. And a lot more time to recover and relax. Then I lost all interests in movies. Everything seems so boring and copied, it feels as if I have seen everything already. Result: Even more time for myself and friends. Now some months ago during an Xcom Campaign I suddenly lost all interest in Gaming. I woke up and it was gone. I tried to resurrect it with all possible tricks, re-playing favorite games, downloading mods etc etc. Nothing worked. It's dead. And now, for some days the last PC thing I had an interest in (forum discussions) starts to die away, too. I deleted many Favorites that I had visited for years. Deleted old email-addresses, social network stuff etc etc. Not because I hate anything, but suddenly I am no longer interested in arguing over ANYTHING with an anonymous 12 year olds. I have my opinion, the other person has his/her opinion, no need to argue. I accept that and the problem is solved, no arguing needed, no posting needed. I like to discuss things with persons i know, I feel that they are really worth my attention. Everyone I asked said that this could be a sign of a depression, but I am actually as happy and content as I have never been in many years. I only have different interests now, I meet friends, go to partys, dance, do sports, travel, wander, cook, read, learn new languages. I do not miss one thing. And yet, I worry a bit about all this. Not because it feels bad, but because I do not fully understand WHY this happens. Any ideas?

http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/ I love it!

>deleted because i felt like it <

I still haven't been able to break the "spell" that is on me. Despite installing some truly excellent add-ons to games I have on my PC and even re-installing old classics that usually got me playing again, I still have ZERO interest in games. But as Coldcall said, I am happy somewhere else and do not need to keep myself distracted with games. I am not perfectly happy, but I made some slight improvements and stabilized my life. It's either that or my attention span is simply too small for 2 things.

Don't worry Azrael Strife, I am as nerdy as you. I saw a single tiny portrait picture (without any text) of a Batman comic in a thread about science some weeks ago and to my shame I realized that I knew: -The title of the Batman comic the picture was from -The whole story of the comic -The author of the comic I also remembered that it wasn't a hardcover and i even remembered the approximate date of release Tsk, I forgot so many important things in my life (names of ex-partners, birthdays of good friends, even my own birthday once), why does this unnecessary data^ have such an enormous persistence?

Hey, many thanks, FullAuto!

Ever wanted a huge V8 engine and only had enough money to buy a Fiat Panda? Do not despair, try this tiny gadget: Ok, I'm not entirely sure if this isn't a hoax, but the idea alone... edit: Sorry for the typo in the title, it seems there is no way to edit it once it is saved...

Seeing a multi-billion dollar company attacking small kids selling their old games to buy newer ones is, frankly said, disgusting. But knowing the work-climate and -style that exist in other Japanese corporations (I worked for Nintendo once) it is not really a wonder for me. If they could they would sell their grandmother, kill her AND sue her at the same time to make more money. Dim views for the future of gaming. It will lead to a lot of freeware (and other older e.g. DOS) games, though, those will become increasingly important and wide-spread. And out of sheer greed sooner or later those will be targeted by corporations like Son-tendo, too, undermining them with In-game-Ads or law-suits. Or ingenious ways to make them no longer run under the newest OS'ses, just you wait... I feel like a bit like that prophet seeing the future without being able to change it.

You both are right. I just realized that the whole on-line activation stuff is one of the major reasons why I do not play PC games anymore. Why do I need all the STEAM, LIVE or any other bloat-ware to simply play a game? And don't tell me that those games are more protected that way, it is simply not true. There are cracks for STEAM and LIVE games like there are for any other game. If that^ is the future of PC gaming, well then my gaming days are over for good.