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A Better ADVENT: Better Pods
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15 May, 2016 @ 11:01am
18 Oct, 2016 @ 12:20pm
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DerBK
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A Better ADVENT: Better Pods

In 4 collections by DerBK
A Better Modlist: Better ADVENT + Raidey's Class Overhaul
15 items
A Better Modlist #2: More Stuff!
31 items
A Better Modlist #3: Better ADVENT + ShadowOps Classes
30 items
A Better Modlist #4: Better ADVENT + Paragon Classes
35 items
Description
__________

THIS MOD IS NO LONGER ACTIVELY SUPPORTED.
DO NOT USE THIS MOD WITH A BETTER ADVENT 2!
__________


-- ABA: Better Pods --
-- Plugin for A Better ADVENT --
-- Mod by DerBK --

-- Release 1.5 --


Important notice #1: This plugin requires the A Better ADVENT mod, version "Full Release 1.0" or up.
Important notice #2: This plugin is NOT compatible with Increased Enemy Squad Size (or IESS+) or More Pods. It also doesn't stack with other versions of Better Pods.
Important notice #3: This plugin heavily edits the Missions.ini. Other mods that do that may also conflict with Better Pods, see the Compatibility notes for more details.

This Plugin improves the composition of enemy pods.
There are two versions available, called "Better Pods" and "Better Pods PLUS". The only difference between the two is PLUS having an extra +1 to enemy squad size.



FEATURES:

1 - Increases enemy squad size scaling with forcelevel (=time elapsed during campaign). There are 4 squad size tiers:
-- First tier is vanilla squad size with an occasional +1 here and there. Minimum Podsize is three. (Forcelevel 1-5)
-- Second tier is global +1 squad size (Forcelevel 6-11)
-- Third tier adds the occasional +2 squad size. (Forcelevel 12-17)
-- Final tier is a global +2 squad size (Forcelevel 18-20)

1.5 - In addition to the squad size scaling, there are these adjustments to enemy squad balancing:
-- Facility Sabotage: These missions now have an additional Advent pod.
-- Facility Sabotage: The boss pod on these missions gets an extra +1 size and +2 forcelevel.

2 - Introduces the enemies specific to A Better ADVENT to various notable encounters:
-- Gatecrasher: Trooper pod now has a Gunslinger. Captain pod now has a Warden.
-- Blacksite: The pod with a MEC and Troopers that guards the vial will now spawn with an AutoDoc and random Trooper variants.
-- PsiGate: The Codex and Gatekeeper guards can be replaced by random Codex and Gatekeeper variants.
-- PsiGate: This mission now always has a Chryssalid Queen and a Chryssalid King (in seperate pods).
-- Forge: You will now always run into the Advent Prime Sectopod.
-- Forge: The Sectopod Prime spawns with random MEC variants. On lower difficulties, the MECs are replaced by random Trooper variants. On easy, the Sectopod Prime spawns on its own.
-- Broadcast: All Archons, MECs and Gatekeepers can randomly be replaced by any of their variants.
-- Leviathan: No increases to pod sizes, but many enemies have been swapped for ABA versions. You will encounter a LOT of Primes in this mission. Be prepared.

3 - Chryssalid enemies outside of the PsiGate mission are replaced by ABA Chryssalid variants appropriate to current force level. This includes Terror missions and the Infestation Dark Event.

4 - Retaliation missions have one to three extra civilians (one in early game, three in late game, two during the bulk of the game) to make up for the added difficulty.

5 - Rulers can no longer spawn during Council missions or during Avenger Defense.



Compatibility notes:
I looked at the code of the following mods because i suspected they had overlap with Better Pods:
- [SEMI-COMPATIBLE] Evac All edits the mission.ini to circumvent a bug introduced by Shen's Last Gift. Sadly, that fix clashes with Better Pods and will lead to empty maps without enemies on Neutralize Target missions. You can either live with that or delete the mission.ini from Evac All and live with the bug that Evac All has. You can find more info about that in the mod description of Evac All.
- [COMPATIBLE] Additional Mission Types seems to only add stuff to the Missions.ini, no overlap with Better Pods.
- [COMPATIBLE] Extended Dark Events doesn't edit the Missions.ini at all.
- [SEMI-COMPATIBLE] Additional Dark Events does several things that are conflicting with Better Pods. The reason ADE does that is because it has Dark Events that create new pods (Sectopods and Avatars, i believe) and these new pods need to be rooted in the mission schedules. Those same lines i need to edit as well. There is a way to make ADE and Better Pods compatible, follow these instructions: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/686642883/357287935548924234/
- [NOT COMPATIBLE]The Friendly AI mod by Fireborn is not compatible. Check out the Friendly AI modpage on Nexusmods for more info and possible alternatives.

Compatibility in a nutshell:
If a mod edits the Missions.ini, it is probably not compatible with Better Pods, although exceptions do exist.
205 Comments
< >
DerBK  [author] 18 Oct, 2016 @ 12:20pm 
This mod has been updated.

- I have been asked to make the final mission great again. The final mission is now great again.

- Better Pods is now compatible with the upcoming ABA2.0. The only change i had to do for that is swapping the Warden on Gatecrasher out for a Riot Control (No Wardens in ABA2.0, they get merged with the Riot Control). Everything else is unchanged.
Higgins 24 Sep, 2016 @ 5:59pm 
All right, thanks!
DerBK  [author] 24 Sep, 2016 @ 3:06pm 
Better Pods does NOT work with ABAI only. It needs the extra enemies for some of the special mission specific pods.

The best (only?) alternatives i see to increase the numbers of enemies per mission are "Increased Enemy Squad Size" (works perfectly fine, but the author abandoned the mod. Still, i checked it, the mod is still fully functional) and "Grimy's Attrition Mode" (unlimited reinforcements --> extra pods). Or both IESS and Attrition.

In addition to that, if you also want the "No rulers in council mission" part of Better Pods, you can use "Restrict Rulers".
Higgins 24 Sep, 2016 @ 2:51pm 
Does this mod work with A Better AI instead of A Better Advent? If not, would you suggest a similar mod for A Better AI?
=[NK]= Col. Jack O'Neil 20 Sep, 2016 @ 4:15pm 
I haven't got mid to late game, I keep resetting a bunch of stuff, but the early mid balance is good, especially because I've got a roster of like, 18+ troops
=[NK]= Col. Jack O'Neil 20 Sep, 2016 @ 4:14pm 
I play with 6 man starting squad, scanning sites plus (Dropped the chance of getting a mission to 60%, as you get heaps more missions=enemies/xp), fatigue, aba+, captains call reinforcements (Rapid reinforcements and editing the ini for 2 turns delay is awesome (As well as evac delay mod to make sky ranger take 2 turns)), and the mod that lets soldiers get xp even if they don't run the missions (Because they would still be learning and talking tactics (Although I dropped the bonus they get right down to like 10%)), also realistic armor and armor as cover are awesome :)

RequiredKills[0]=0, \\
RequiredKills[1]=1, \\
RequiredKills[2]=12, \\
RequiredKills[3]=30, \\
RequiredKills[4]=58, \\
RequiredKills[5]=100, \\
RequiredKills[6]=150, \\
RequiredKills[7]=210, \\
RequiredKills[8]=300
DerBK  [author] 20 Sep, 2016 @ 1:19pm 
I don't know. Like i said, i play with Fatigue, so this particular issue doesn't apply to me and i have no experiences with it.

Better Pods doesn't even add all that many enemies to early missions. Like 2-4 at first maybe? That ramps up to about +12 in the endgame (5 pods + reinforcements, +2 enemies each). Divided by number of soldiers, that's 2 extra kills per soldier and mission in the endgame. Less than that early and midgame.
Since Better Pods scales its increase, you'd have to scale the increase to required kills (or XP? or both? Not sure, actually!) as well...

I would probably only do subtle changes, not more than 20% increases to the numbers. But that's a complete shot in the dark that would need to be playtested, i guess.
starrynite120 20 Sep, 2016 @ 1:12pm 
Thank you for the response. Makes sense what you decided. If you were to edit it though, how much would you increase it by? Just curious. I was just a bit concerned when I just got the second tier armor and weapons and already had a Major Ranger.
DerBK  [author] 20 Sep, 2016 @ 1:08pm 
But yes, soldiers absolutely level fast with Better Pods in the mix. I use both Fatigue and Notoriety, so it never bothered me. I figure, if i have to punch back pods of 6 instead of pods of 4, i might as well get some reward for it.

Well, aside from the piles of extra bodies which can translate directly into cash... i think those are a much more important balance concern than the extra XP. It's not quite the piles of money that you can get from Grimy's Loot Mod, but it's very noticable how much more money you can make by selling corpses by the dozen.
DerBK  [author] 20 Sep, 2016 @ 1:03pm 
If that is an concern for you, you could edit the progession of needed kills per rank up fairly simple.

In XComGameData_XpData.ini, there are the numbers for RequiredXP for ranks 0-7 and the required Kills for rank 0-7. The required Kills are different for the 4 difficulties as well and have seperate lines.

Note that if you use the LW PerkPack, that mod already changes some stuff to these lines by adding the rank 8 to these lists. So if you run LWPP and want to change something here, don't do it in the vanilla ini, but do it in the XpData.ini of LWPP.

I was asked before (months ago, before Perk Pack was even a thing) if i would change something here with Better Pods and decided against it. Preferences for how fast soldiers level vary from player to player and with the class mods they use. And wether they use Fatigue/Notoriety! In the end, I decided to stay out of it for compatibility reasons.