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"

Well I know the last post in this thread was well... a long time ago, but I hope nobody minds me bumping this. Seems silly to make a new thread for the same topic when this is on page 2. Anyway, onto two of my most recent debacles. First FUBAR Mission The worst was what would have been my second terror-site if I hadn't managed to down the terror ship. It was sectoid, but I knew what to expect going in and I was confident. I had laser rifles and the heavy lasers, modded with UFO Extender to be worth a damn now in the right hands. It had been several months since I'd played X-Com, but the last time I had played I had some good memories attacking another sectoid terror ship that I took down with minimal losses (I think I lost only one rookie). You know, it's not too bad, you just move slowly and carefully and make sure to eliminate every enemy in range as you go so the leader can't mind control anybody. Well, this time that didn't work. I think I was both unlucky and rusty. We started in the bottom right corner only about two sectors from the UFO with two cabins on our side, between us and the craft, in between them a grove of trees. With all that cover I thought it would be easy to cut down the enemies as they approached. Right at the start there were two cyberdiscs in front of us and they dropped one man, but we got the smoke grenades set and deployed. A turn later and one cyberdisc was dead with the other retreating out of range, or so I thought. Unfortunately it turns out that disc rose up into the air and started spotting for the sectoid leader, who immediately start attacking my captain who was also the only guy on the squad capable of wielding the heavy laser. He killed one man but then panicked the next turn. A sectoid was hiding in each cabin and they claimed one more trooper but I put them down soon enough. As I made my way through the buildings though I discovered three more cyberdiscs on the other side. Reaction fire dropped two of my scouts but with some grenades and lucky shots I downed the cyberdiscs... I thought. So feeling that the coast was clear, and with no more mind attacks for a few turns, I armed the captain again and we prepared to move forward as we discovered one more cyberdisc in the distance. I think this was the fifth or sixth one? (playing on Veteran, by the way) Reaction fire killed the man who sighted him but the captain needed one more turn to save up his energy for a heavy laser blast. Then the mind control attacks came again... and suddenly the captain had all the energy he needed. He shot two more men and the rest started panicking, running blindly into reaction fire from the cyberdisc and another foe I never got a look at. Two turns later and I was down to three soldiers minus the panicking and intermittently murdering captain. I knew things were bad and I never reload (unless I really lose my temper) so I was trying to evacuate. However this was still relatively early in the game and I didn't want to leave all of that valuable gear around. The last three soldiers I had left seemed to be doing well, avoiding panicking, so I scrambled to grab a few supplies and run for the skyranger. It didn't work. What do you know, last turn where I'd have been ready to run all three up the ramps and finally the sergeant panics and all of a sudden one of the other remaining soldiers is the new target of mind control. He shoots his friend and next turn he panics and runs into the cyberdisc. Then the sergeant gets mind controlled. Ironically now only the formally alien-enslaved captain is left and he alone makes it up the ramp, completely empty handed, and aborts the mission. Sole survivor, all 13 men under his command dead (three or four of them killed by his own hand). For some reason this qualified him for a promotion and he was shortly made into a commander. In that mission we never made it more than one sector away from the skyranger. We kept him out of rotation for about six months until we found our first alien base. He lead the assault... and was the last to fall, his mind scrambled by the final alien, but this time with four underlings to spare. I assume Xcom had him institutionalized. Second FUBAR Mission Sectoids again, but a different base, and several in-game months later. I was confident again but this was EuroCom's second mission. A chance to prove themselves. Ten soldiers plus a laser tank assaulting another downed sectoid terror ship. We wanted to capture a leader. We had learned our lesson from the last attempt. Well, as with the first mission, right off the bat I knew we had a fight on our hands. There were two cyberdiscs just underneath the skyranger and a third a little ways off. There were three sectoids in the immediate vicinity too and I soon discovered there were a few more just beyond view. We were in the center of the edge of the map with no real cover to speak of. Naturally I sent out the tank first and it drew some reaction fire. I hoped that the cyberdiscs were spent and sent out my first two troopers, a rookie and the sergeant, Patricia Horton. She as a good woman. The rookie hit the sand (we were in the Saudi desert) and dropped a cyberdisc. Reaction fire from another killed him and Patricia avenged him, the resulting explosion destroying another cyberdisc and a sectoid. She ran for cover as I made the next turn and took two plasma shots to the neck from a sectoid sniper. The tank was destroyed a second later. That aside, things were going well for us. Only one hostile was left outside the skyranger and I could tell from the layout of the map that this guy represented just about the last of the alien resistance outside the ship. I sent out more troops and we killed the sniper and secured the landing zone at last. We fanned out over the dunes, picking off three more sectoids who came to investigate. One trooper got mind controlled by only after dropping all his weapons so we just let him wonder around the desert doing his own thing. I'm running a mod that allows high explosives to breech UFO walls, so I sent in my demolitions man to blow open the back of the ship (we landed behind it). He got in close, primed his high explosive and prepared to throw it. Go figure the sectoid leader knew what I was up to and he chose right then to panic my explosives expert. He promptly dropped his ordinance at his feet and took off like a bat out of hell across the sand. He was fine, he got clear of the explosion, but I had been intending him to throw it several paces to the wall of the UFO. Right near him was one of my sharpshooters and she didn't have time to flee. She was killed instantly. A turn later, and the demoman was killed by an alien sniper (who was soon dropped by one of my own). I had a reserve demoman with an extra pack of high explosive and he finished the job, opening up the way into the UFO. I sent my scout to spot any hostile inside (two cyberdiscs), and with some trouble we got them, losing a man to reaction fire in the process. There were five of us left at this point and so the captain lead the team inside, dropping two more stragglers and then making way for the bridge. There was just one alien left and he wasn't using psi attacks (oh well). However this one was no push-over. He was hidden in one of those alcoves that overlooks the bottom floor. I knew about these ambush spots and I thought I took the appropriate precautions, placing my troops in a place where they could get the 'drop' on him if he tried to drop in on them. He knew better. The little bastard lobbed a grenade through the opening and blew up my reserve demoman. The other sentry ran over to take him down, stopping to take cover behind the only standing wall in the place. It wasn't cover though, it turns out, and three shots to the back of the neck later killed him. I was just impressed the personal armor lasted that long. Down to three, we decided to come at him from the top floor. In the same turn that the sectoid bastard shot the other sentry I figured he had no TU's left so I sent the captain into his little hidey-hole to blast him. It turns out, he wasn't finished, and he put one in the captain. Thankfully the captain survived and retreated. NOW the sectoid had no TU's left, right? Of-course not, so I sent in a squaddie... and she promptly got a ventilated body cavity and a one-way ticket to the after-life. Well I had enough, so taking advantage of another mod that lets me open doors without going through I got smart and lobbed a grenade through to blow the little bastard up. 2 survivors out of 10 men and a heavy weapons platform. Third FUBAR Mission The sectoids were fixing to infiltrate a country in Europe and it seemed they were about to succeed with battleships landing everywhere and what not. We launched a joint strike with all my bases to hit each ship. Each mission was dramatic, but Euro-team got it the worst. They had such a promising start too. This time it was a team of 14 and they deployed in corner. Five dead aliens later they'd only lost one man and destroyed three cyberdiscs. One word: Blasterbomb. Long story short, there were four survivors (and a 5th who was MIA from mind control). I had another bad mission a long time ago in a different playthrough, near the end of the game. We assaulted an ethereal supply ship. The crew had two hover tanks and all had flying suits and heavy plasma. With ease we eliminated the resistance and entered the ship, cutting our way through and gunning down all in our path. We even blew a hole in the roof and took out the bridge. Then suddenly the last surviving ethereal, rather than panicking, went completely John McClain on my platoon. He sniped one man and then got another with reaction fire. My men inside the ship were divided into pairs so this bought Mr. McClain a temporary respite... which he used to focus and mind-control my commander, who then fired a blasterbomb and killed three more men. Next turn he panicked and a turn my captain was mind controlled and shot the commander in the back. Then a repeat with the captain and the hands of a squaddie. There were still about ten or so soldiers left but with the commander and captain dead the rest, including a colonel, began panicking and berserking, claiming more lives in the process. I had two soldiers on the bottom level of the ship and both were shot from above by the ethereal through one of the many holes in the ceiling. I'm not even kidding, there was just that ONE ethereal left, I am positive. I never got the bastard either. In disgust, I quit the game and started over completely.

Hello, new poster here. I discovered X-Com only a few months ago and after playing through it on Beginner (starting a new game on Veteran) and reading the wiki something kind of bothers me. Later in the game all aliens use heavy plasma exclusively. While I understand the game is intended to get a little harder later on, I find this makes combat a little boring. It also tends to encourage the player him or herself to use heavy plasmas (almost) exclusively as well. Personally I think this is a little imbalanced and a little boring, it also makes just about every alien the same in function, despite any different ranks/designations they might have. So my question is... Is it possible to mod the game so that aliens of certain 'ranks' have certain weapons and to go one step further, is it possible to mod the game so that certain alien races use certain weapons? For example... Considering the small size and presumably lower strength of a sectoid might it make more sense of they were consistently armed with plasma pistols and plasma rifles, but never heavy plasmas or blaster launchers? To make up for these shortcomings they'd still have their psionics armed leaders/commanders and of-course their nasty cyberdiscs. Mutons are big strong brutes that can take a lot of punishment. They are weak to psionic attacks and have weaker terror units, but they themselves I find are incredibly resilient and dangerous even on Experienced difficulty. I think it makes sense though that mutons would arm themselves exclusively with heavy plasma and field blaster launchers. Floaters don't seem like they'd be that much stronger than sectoids (they probably don't want to carry a lot of weight because that might make it harder for them to float effectively), but of-course they've got better armor and better accuracy, no psionics, and a weaker terror unit. Snakemen walk the middle line with a powerful terror unit, moderate armor, good combat stats, and no psionics. However like mutons I imagine they'd be more likely to field lots of heavy plasma and blaster launchers. I have another reason for bringing this up though. I was reading an older thread, this thread: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/Plasm...ings-t7390.html in which a poster was arguing that the plasma pistol is a good weapon. Well, I agree with him! It is accurate and possesses adequate stopping power against most enemies. I also agree with its detractors; after a month or two aliens stop using it all together and you have to use up precious elerium-115 to manufacture it. This is another factor that causes the game to herd the player into using certain weapons. It's not as if the laser pistol is totally outclassed by the plasma pistol either. While it doesn't have as much stopping power or accuracy, it doesn't need a clip either, freeing up space on your transport. I just feel that if the game were modded in the ways I mentioned above, if it were possible, that the game might be more fun. In some sense I suppose it would be easier, but if the game allows you a little more freedom in choosing which weapons you want to equip yourself with I think the player would still be better off. I did have one other 'suggestion' though. Realistically, laser weapons should be the most accurate weapons in the game. A laser travels at the speed of light and it isn't affected by wind resistance or velocity. It hits exactly where it is pointed. More importantly, a laser doesn't produce any 'kick' from the gun. Plasma on the other hand is super heated matter and if plasma guns are launching super heated particles then I suppose they might have some kick. It just seems that plasma weapons outclass lasers in just about every way. I think that maybe laser weapons should be a little more accurate or maybe heavy plasma should just weigh more. Perhaps as its name implies heavy plasma should be heavy, making it something that you don't really want loaded onto every soldier. Ultimately I don't have the skills do any modifications like this myself, not unless the utility I downloaded from the file section allows it. However I think the re-balances I suggested would make UFO even better than it already is. Thoughts, opinions? I just wanted to get that out there.