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[WotC] Vanilla Balance Overhaul

Have you ever wondered if it is fair for your conventional weapons to be on par with high-tech alien magnetic and beam ones? Do you feel that XCOM 2 is way too fast-paced, but Beta Strike option simply isn't for you? Then you should absolutely give this overhaul a try.

Let's take a look at the main changes (this is only a fraction of them, the full changelog is available in the thread below):

1. Power Levels and overall stat rebalance

The main aim of Vanilla Balance Overhaul is to improve player's experience by balancing the equipment of both sides of the conflict. XCOM is on the run, so there's no way it is stronger, right?

- Damage of pretty much every XCOM weapon and item that deals damage is reduced
- Bonus damage on critical hits is reduced to about 1/3 of weapon's base damage for XCOM side only (e.g. weapons with base damage of 1,2,3,4 deal +1 dmg on crit, weapons with base damage of 5,6,7 deal +2 dmg on crit, etc).
- Multiple items and perks such as Combat Protocol, Bluescreen Rounds, Overdrive Serum, etc. are rebalanced. Several new items are added as well
- Some of the aliens are slightly rebalanced. For example, Muton's primary weapon damage is increased to 5-6 and plasma grenade shred is increased to 2
- Hunker Down ability is reworked to be a bit closer to defensive stance from other xcom games

2. Missions

- Timers for most of the timed missions are increased to compensate for longer firefights
- The amount of containers on Supply Extraction and health values of armed civilians on dlc Retaliation are increased. The minimum amount of saved civilians required to win basic Retaliation is reduced

3. New enemies

- New ADVENT-related faction: EXALT
- New alien units: Heavy Muton (late-game follower), Centurion (melee-focused late-game Archon leader) and Wild Chryssalid (Lost leader and follower)

4. Final Mission overhaul

Operation Leviathan feels extremely dull in vanilla XCOM 2. All you have to do to wipe the next pod is wait for your cooldown abilities to reset. Therefore, I decided to give it some special treatment in my mod:

- The updated mission features three unique bosses as well as several final-mission only enemies
- Fight against rapid-moving Subject Nefas, fearsome Sectopod Mark 2 that can eat ABA Primes for breakfast and mysterious "true boss" - Master, who can singlehandedly destroy your squad unless approached carefully

List of integrated mods and assets:

1. Anisotropic's Reliable Smoke
2. -bg-'s Reward Decks Refresher
3. ADVENT beam weapon models from Claus's Mercenary Plasma Weapons
4. Unit models from DerBK's A Better ADVENT
5. ADVENT Mag Auto-Rifle model from Claus's ADVENT Pathfinders
6. ADVENT Mag Shotgun model from CMDBob's Total Advent Weaponry
7. DerBK's Better Repeater
8. Some code from kdm2k6's Patrol And Scamper
9. RealityMachina's DLC Breakthroughs Support
(Integrations are done to prevent unintended interactions after installing the said mods separately)